150930-a
Brazen theft of Florida’s Amendment
TheLedger.com - by Carl Hiaasen, Syndicated Columnist for the Miami Herald
September 30, 2015
Most embezzlers try to conceal their thefts, but not in Tallahassee. The looting of Florida’s Amendment 1 conservation funds took place in broad daylight, orchestrated by two poker-faced swindlers named Andy Gardiner and Steve Crisafulli.
Gardiner is president of the Senate. Crisafulli is speaker of the House. Remember their names, because they ripped Floridians off big-time — and it will happen again next year, if they think they can get away with it.
More than 4 million Floridians voted last November to set aside 33 percent of the revenues from existing real-estate stamp taxes for buying conservation and recreation lands, and for the restoration of such areas already owned by the state.
The plan offered hope for the Everglades, the Indian River Lagoon and other places endangered by over-development and pollution.
Amendment 1 was approved by a landslide, an unprecedented mandate to protect what remains of Florida’s wetlands and wild places. And the Legislature, led by Gardiner and Crisafulli, responded with a bold statement of its own: Screw you, folks.
Gov. Rick Scott, of course, shoved his hands in his pockets and looked the other way.
How much did they steal ? And where did it go ?
The infuriating details are spelled out in a lawsuit filed by Earthjustice on behalf of the Florida Wildlife Federation, the Sierra Club and other conservation groups.
After the debt service was paid on its bonds, the state’s Land Acquisition Trust Fund held $550 million that could have been spent the way voters intended — purchasing key tracts of unspoiled habitat and recreational lands.
Yet only about 7 percent of that money — $50 million — was actually set aside for new land as promised in Amendment 1. Of that amount, a pitiful $15.2 million was allocated to Florida Forever, the state’s signature land-buying program.
Lawmakers’ contempt for the new constitutional amendment (and all Floridians who supported it) was made clear by how casually they siphoned the conservation money — more than $237 million of it, the lawsuit charges.
About $21.7 million went to the Department of Agriculture to implement “best management practices” on privately owned property — in other words, a big fat giveaway to ranchers and farmers. Even the governor couldn’t stomach it, and vetoed $5 million from the allocation.
However, he let slide another $5 million that Crisafulli and Gardiner funneled to the same agency for “nutrient reduction” and water retention projects on private lands. What an odd philosophy from two alleged conservatives: Paying farmers and ranchers not to dump their waste into public waters. It’s a like a Polluters Relief Fund.
If you’re wondering how an agency that has almost nothing do with conservation received so much conservation money, remember that Crisafulli’s dream is to be Florida’s commissioner of agriculture someday.
He wants corporate farmers and ranchers to owe him, because that’s who’s going to bankroll his campaign. The Legislature also swiped Amendment 1 funds to buy “risk management insurance” for several state agencies, including the Department of Environmental Protection and the Department of State.
The money would cover worker’s comp claims and federal civil rights violations, off-the-wall expenditures that are nowhere to be found in the ballot language of Amendment 1.
Even more suspicious is the $38.6 million appropriated for “springs restoration.” Earthjustice says the funds could actually be hijacked for municipal sewage plants and storm water systems, which also aren’t mentioned anywhere in the amendment.
Attorneys for Crisafulli, Gardiner and the Legislature have asked Leon County Circuit Judge George Reynolds III to dismiss the suit. They say Amendment 1 is worded broadly enough to allow them to do all sorts of things with the money, besides buying conservation lands.
Seldom in politics will you see such naked disdain for the public’s will. Crisafulli last year was re-elected to the House with 42,363 votes. Multiply that by 100 and you get the approximate number of Floridians who voted statewide for Amendment 1.
In Crisafulli’s home county of Brevard, the measure was favored by a 3-1 margin. Gardiner’s senate district covers parts of Brevard and Orange County, where about eight out of 10 voters said yes to Amendment 1.
Obviously he doesn’t care. Neither does Crisafulli. They might not be as subtle as most embezzlers, but their consciences look the same.
Small and empty.

150930-b
Grant to help shore up Cape Sable
KeysNews.com – by Brian Bowden, Free Press Staff
September 30, 2015
SOUTH FLORIDA — A $2 million grant to be used to restore and protect Cape Sable’s coastal wetlands through the construction of four dams was awarded to the non-profit Everglades Foundation last month by the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation.
“This is the most important place inside Everglades National Park,” Tavernier-based National Audubon Society research manager Peter Frezza told the Free Press last week.
The problem deals directly with old canals dug into the cape that allow saltwater from Florida Bay to wash into freshwater areas of the park during high tides and storms, where it kills vegetation and alters the ecosystem.
“We’re losing places like this quickly. It’s continuing at a rapid pace,” Frezza said. “The current conditions are breaking down critical habitat.”
These trenches were originally carved out about a century ago by Henry Flagler’s land company in the hopes of draining the marshy wetland and attracting settlers farther south. That plan never panned out and it left behind a muddy, salty mess in the cape’s previously freshwater Lake Ingraham, which park officials now describe as brackish.
Additionally, the canals allow extreme amounts of nutrient-laden runoff to flow from the interior back into the bay.
That has the potential to affect the population of the bay’s gamefish, according to Frezza, which many Upper Keys backcountry anglers rely on as a consistent source of income.
“It currently has a real negative impact on the fish there,” he said.
The cape, located on the southwestern portion of ENP and bordering the bay, is home to a slew of roseate spoonbills and wood storks that use the area for foraging grounds. Other wading birds and shorebirds frequent the area as well. Endangered species such as the American crocodile and smalltooth sawfish live and breed in the same waters.
The low-lying area is also susceptible to sea level rise, Frezza said. 
“But these dams would offer resiliency to all of that,” he said.
The grant, specifically, will be put toward the construction cost of four dams.
While the $2 million is a huge step in the right direction, according to Tom Van Lent, director of science and policy for the Everglades Foundation, it must raise another $6 million in funds.
“We’re looking to the National Park Service for the lion’s share of this,” Van Lent said. “Because it’s directly affecting their land.”
Other possible funding sources are B.P. oil spill money and private donations.
In the meantime, according to Van Lent and Frezza, the NPS is working on the final stages of an environmental assessment for the dams, which is a requirement before securing more funds. The assessment will outline the problems occurring in Cape Sable, what and how much wildlife is affected by it, and how to reverse it. 
According to Frezza, it should be wrapped up by the end of the year.
The four proposed dams are part of a second phase of efforts to protect the cape. The initial phase was a $10 million damming project that helped slow down some of the flow of saltwater into Cape Sable and surrounding areas.
“It’s like a house fire,” Van Lent said of the saltwater intrusion. “And we need to put it out.”

150930-c
The Miami River: A Lesson for Jax's Waterways ?
MetroJacksonville.com
September 30, 2015
The Miami River may be Florida's most unique working waterfront. The 5.5-mile river flows from the terminus of the Miami Canal at Miami International Airport to Biscayne Bay. Originally, the river was fed by several springs and rapids formed by water from the Everglades flowing over a rocky ledge. During the early 20th century, dredging and filling significantly altered the channel. In addition, over 29 sewer lines dumping untreated sewage into the waterway led to high levels of pollution.
Between the 1970s and early 21st century, the amount of freight shipped on the working waterway has doubled from 250,000 tons to 500,000 tons. While the Atlantic Coast's large ports are in a race to accommodate larger ships, the shallow Miami River fills a unique niche. Many of the river's small cargo terminals load cargo destined for shallow draft ports throughout the Caribbean ports. In fact, most of the river's trade is with the Dominican Republic, Haiti
and the Bahamas. Products shipped included used vehicles, dry foods, canned goods, appliances and clothing.
Scenery along the river has changed in recent decades. The 15-foot deep navigable waterway's shoreline features public riverwalks, city parks, over 7,000 new residential units, 17 restaurants and 16 historic sites. In addition, its fish houses, boatyards and international shipping terminals make it one of the most interesting ports in the Southeast. However, the explosion of high density development in downtown has resulted in several high-rise condominium towers and mixed use projects replacing long time maritime related businesses.
Today, the Miami River Commission, a watchdog, advocate and clearinghouse for the river, is working to improve the waterway, enhance public access to the river and preserve much of its working class heritage, while also accommodating additional high density infill development. Although only 5.5 miles in length, preservation, environmental cleanup, and public accessibility improvement efforts along the Miami River are worth keeping an eye on as we deal with our on issues involving the St. Johns River and its tributaries.
With that in mind, here's a brief photo tour of the Miami River:
http://www.metrojacksonville.com/article/2015-sep-the-miami-river-a-lesson-for-jaxs-waterways/page/1

150929-a
Al Gore: How does Florida Gov. Rick Scott not 'notice' Miami climate change risk?
TampaBay.com – by Amy Hollyfield, Staff Writer
September 29, 2015
The Miami Herald's Jenny Staletovich and Joey Flechas reporting on Al Gore's Miami appearance:
“As if on cue, a king tide powered by a supermoon flooded parts of South Florida Sunday and Monday, setting a soggy stage for international forums aimed at drawing attention to the perils of climate change.
In downtown Miami, about 1,200 people gathered to train for a climate corps led by former Vice President Al Gore, who drew mainstream attention to the issue in his 2006 Academy Award-winning documentary An Inconvenient Truth. For nearly three hours, Gore walked a crowd that included participants from 80 countries through his now-famous slide show, rebooted with a decade’s worth of new science and data supporting the dire consequences of a warming planet.
Across Biscayne Bay, where climate change has made Miami Beach ground zero for rising seas, the French Embassy hosted another panel in advance of a U.N. summit in Paris in November.
“The scientists have long since told us we have to change,” Gore told the packed room at the Hyatt Regency overlooking the Miami River. “But now Mother Nature is saying it with water in the streets in this city.”
Though Gore largely avoided politics, he accused the state’s power companies of standing in the way of solar power and took a subtle jab at Gov. Rick Scott, whose environmental regulatory agency has tended to avoid using the term “climate change” in official documents. Scott has denied reports that he banned the phrase.
“Miami has an enormous amount at risk,” Gore said as he showed pictures of sunny-day flooding in South Florida during a 2013 king tide. “I just wonder how the governor watches this and says, ‘I don’t notice anything. Do you notice anything?’ Not to make an ad hominem comment, but I’m genuinely curious.”

150929-b
Corps awards second contract this year for Kissimmee River Restoration
ACE Press Release - Contact Jennifer Mille
September 29, 2015
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Jacksonville District has awarded its second construction contract this year for the Kissimmee River Restoration project, a large-scale Everglades restoration project spanning through Highlands and Okeechobee counties.
The $4.7 million construction contract was awarded to BCPeabody Construction Services Inc. of Tampa, Fla. on Monday (Sept. 28). The contract, known as the C-38 Reach 3 Backfill and Bass Embankment Degrade contract, will involve backfilling a portion of the channelized Kissimmee River (C-38 Canal) within the upcoming months. 
"Backfilling portions of the C-38 Canal will restore pre-channelized conditions along the Kissimmee River and provide valuable ecological benefits,” said April Patterson, Jacksonville District project manager. "It will enable native plants and animals to return to the area and also restore the floodplain to its natural hydrologic function."
Once backfilling begins, navigation will be interrupted for approximately 1.5 miles along the channelized Kissimmee River beginning at the US 98 bridge and extending south.  It is anticipated that backfilling operations will take approximately one year to complete.  Access to the river will remain open at the Istokpoga, S-65C and S-65D boat ramps.  However, navigation through the construction zone will be prohibited during this time period.
This is the second construction contract awarded for the Kissimmee River Restoration project this year.  The MacArthur Ditch Backfill construction contract was awarded Jan. 15, 2015 to Herve Cody Contractor from Robbinsville, North Carolina and is currently 22 percent complete.
“Only two additional construction contracts need to be awarded for the Kissimmee River Restoration project, Reach 2 Backfill and S-69 Weir, both of which are scheduled to be awarded within the next two years,” said Patterson. “The entire project is scheduled to be completed in 2019.”
The Kissimmee River Restoration project is a congressionally authorized undertaking sponsored by the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers and the South Florida Water Management District.  Once completed, the Kissimmee River Restoration Project will restore more than 40 square miles of river-floodplain ecosystem, including almost 20,000 acres of wetlands and 44 miles of historic river channel.
Additional information on the Kissimmee River Restoration project available at: http://bit.ly/Everglades_KRR

150929-c
Putnam wants water policy passed
Herald Tribune - by Jim Turner, News Service of Florida
September 29, 2015
TALLAHASSEE — Agriculture Commissioner Adam Putnam said that Florida lawmakers must approve a water-policy plan floated last spring to avoid the types of shortages being experienced in California.
Putnam, warning of “dark clouds on the horizon” at the Florida Chamber of Commerce’s Future of Florida Forum, also spoke of the need to further improve educational options in the state and for a third natural-gas pipeline to be built to further diversify the state’s energy sources.
But the initial focus of his speech this week was the need to establish water policies for a state that will “face over a 1-billion-gallon-a-day shortfall by 2030.” And the way to do that, he said, is to approve water policies outlined in a bill (HB 7003) that died when the House abruptly ended the regular legislative session in April.
Putnam said lawmakers need to close the remaining “minor” differences in their water proposals as a way to maintain the quality of life in Florida and plan economic opportunities.
“The House, the Senate have worked very hard throughout the last year to close a big gap between their two ideas, and we’re on the goal line,” Putnam said at the two-day forum held at the Omni Orlando Resort at ChampionsGate. “We need your help to punch it across the goal line this year. This session. Not to monkey with it. Not to go back and litigate fights that were resolved last session. Pigs get fat, and hogs get slaughtered. Let’s pass the bill we have this year, this session so that we can move on to all the other economic-development issues that our state faces.”
The House water proposal, which had backing from the state’s agriculture industry and influential business groups, failed to get approval from the Senate, where members had their own ideas about changing the state’s water policies to meet the demands of a voter-approved constitutional amendment about land and water conservation.
The Senate moved closer to the House’s proposed expansion of best-management practices — such as advanced stormwater management, erosion controls and specific fertilizing procedures — beyond the 470,000-acre farming region south of Lake Okeechobee to all lands around Lake Okeechobee and the state’s natural springs.
But as the session was scuttled, the Senate reaffirmed its support, in a 39-1 vote, to include two measures that had been opposed by the House — a pedestrian trail network backed by Senate President Andy Gardiner and an oversight council to rate potential water projects.
Gardiner, R-Orlando, said at the time that the council would provide spending oversight of money from Amendment 1, the ballot initiative supported by 75 percent of voters in 2014. The initiative requires 33 percent of the proceeds from a real-estate tax to go for land and water maintenance and acquisition,
Putnam said the key parts of the proposed legislation will help avoid local governmental fights over water rights that dominated regions in the 1980s and that could impact business development and recruitment to Florida.
“You can’t expect world class attractions in Orlando to put billions of dollars into their parks if they don’t know whether they’re going to get an allocation for their newest water based features,” Putnam said. “You can’t expect to bring in a Boeing, a Mercedes, whatever shiny economic-development prize that we want, if there is some question about whether the most fundamental element in economic development will be available to them.”

150929-d
We shouldn’t frack our water supply
TheLedger.com - Editorial
September 29, 2015
Land, oil and religion are not the only things people are dying for in the Middle East. In Yemen, for example, people are dying, literally, for water. The Yemeni government estimated earlier this year that 4,000 of its people will be killed during 2015 in violent confrontations over access to underground stores of fresh water.
The water woes in this country, particularly in the West, which is dealing with a ravaging drought, have not reached such a dire state. But the intensity of conflict could escalate if relief doesn’t arrive soon. We in Florida should consider ourselves blessed with the abundant rain we typically get. Polk County, for instance, has — thankfully — had above average rainfall so far this year.
But as we recently learned concern is growing about the water situation here.
Polk County and many of its cities, with the help of state water managers, have united to form a water consortium to figure out how to keep all sectors of the community hydrated with plentiful, fresh water as the county adds another 300,000 people over the next few decades. Over the weekend, meanwhile, came reports that federal environmental regulators estimate that the state would have to spend as much as $16.5 billion over the next 20 years just to maintain its rickety water infrastructure system — and that’s without considering the expense of developing alternatives to underground pumping. That’s a major problem that must be addressed because those leaky transmission pipes drain millions of gallons of water annually.
To sum up, Florida is in better shape water-wise than many parts of our country and the rest of the world, but we still can do a better job of safeguarding and expanding the amount of the life’s liquid that we suck from the aquifer.
With that in mind, why would we ever allow anyone to jeopardize that valuable supply of fresh water by flushing toxic chemicals into the ground in the pursuit of fossil fuels? State Sen. Darren Soto, for one, has considered that question, and wants to prohibit that.
The Kissimmee Democrat, whose district includes some of eastern Polk including Haines City and Poinciana, filed a bill last month to prohibit hydraulic fracturing, or fracking,
“I believe it is detrimental to our water supply,” Soto, who saw a similar measure stall during this year’s session, told The Ledger earlier this month. “We also need to protect our quality of life, protect our outdoors and environment. In other states there have been earthquakes and faucets set on fire.”
The senator is right. Our underground water supply does not just slake the thirst of some 20 million Sunshine State residents. Our farmers rely on it to help feed the world. And the clear, cool output of many huge springs across Central and North Florida help generate tourist business for small communities. Our water supply is life-giving on many levels and not something to be trifled with.
Some, however, don’t see it that way.
A couple of weeks after Soto’s bill was filed, state Sen. Garrett Richter, a Naples Republican, and Rep. Ray Wesley Rodriques, a Republican from Fort Myers, filed legislation that would ban local governments from outlawing fracking — something Soto had encouraged as a stopgap practice until the state could act. To date at least 35 local governments across Florida have enacted anti-fracking ordinances, or adopted resolutions calling for a statewide ban on the practice, which Richter’s and Rodrigues’ bills innocuously refer to as “high-pressure well stimulation.”
Don’t think Big Oil won’t try to exert some high pressure above ground as well, to get the Legislature to approve the latter measure. After Texas passed such a law in May, The Wall Street Journal noted that similar bills were being entertained in New Mexico, Ohio, Colorado and Oklahoma. In Florida, the industry is already looking for the goods, and won’t sit idle while Soto and his backers move to curtail their efforts. Florida Department of Environmental Protection records show that since December 2012 petroleum companies have filed 15 applications for exploratory oil and natural gas wells, for areas near the Everglades and in the Panhandle. Of those, nine were approved, including one just last week for Santa Rosa County, and five are still pending. Just one was rejected.
Florida has a long history of such exploration, all over the state. DEP records indicate that between 1954 and 1976 oil companies were permitted to sink three wildcat wells in Polk County, one east of Lakeland, one between Frostproof and Fort Meade and one north of Lake Wales. Without legal protections such as Soto’s bill in place, they might be back, arguing that new technology could access deposits Eisenhower-era equipment couldn’t. And if the Richter-Rodrigues measure passes, local governments would be powerless to stop them. Our water, here and throughout Florida, is too vital to be put at risk. Soto’s bill deserves support.

150928-a
Corals off South Florida hit with severe bleaching
Sun Sentinel - by David Fleshler
September 28, 2015
Corals are turning chalk white and dying on reefs stretching from the Florida Keys to Palm Beach County, in what experts call one of the worst episodes in two decades of coral bleaching.
Under stress from unusually warm water, the corals are expelling the tiny bits of algae that give them their fiery streaks of red, orange or green color and that provide the coral with nutrition.
It's a bad situation for the corals out there right now.- Margaret Miller, National Marine Fisheries Service
Divers have reported tracts of corals that have lost their living tissue, leaving ghostly white skeletons. Bleaching leaves coral vulnerable to diseases that can be fatal, although some corals do regain their color and survive.
Federal and state officials say the bleaching started this summer, as ocean temperatures peaked. The danger is expected to diminish as cooler weather arrives, but many coral communities, which support a vast range of fish, crabs and other marine life, may not be able to recover.
"It's significant impact, and it's permanent," said Margaret Miller, ecologist with the National Marine Fisheries Service Southeast Fisheries Science Center. "Corals do not grow back very effectively. So that's a permanent loss to our coral community. It just becomes rock."
The Florida Department of Environmental Protection says the most bleaching has been seen in the Florida Keys, Miami-Dade County and Broward County, although some reports have also come in from Palm Beach County.
Brian Walker, research scientist at Nova Southeastern University's Halmos College of Natural Sciences and Oceanography, said the bleaching appears to be particularly severe from Biscayne National Park to Hillsboro Inlet in northern Broward County. Among the hardest-hit species are pillar corals, maze corals, star corals, and staghorn corals.
These include corals off Broward and Miami-Dade counties that had survived 200 or 300 years. Scientists have found that some of these old corals have lost nearly half of their living tissue.
"These corals are very important because they have proven to be quite resilient, withstanding everything over the last couple hundred years," Walker said. "Understanding how these resilient corals respond to present environmental conditions informs us of how the environment has changed. The fact that they are dying now after living hundreds of years, may indicate that their surroundings are much more stressful than ever before."
The corals form the only major reef tract in the continental United States and support fishing, diving and snorkeling. Reporting the bleached and dead corals are scientists from government agencies and universities, as well as volunteer divers, in a system coordinated by the Florida Department of Environmental Protection..
The sick corals off the South Florida coast are part of a worldwide bleaching outbreak that includes the coral reefs of Hawaii and other Pacific islands and is projected to reach Indonesia, the Philippines and Australia. The last global coral bleaching event occurred in 1997 and 1998, when 15 to 20 percent of the world's coral reefs were lost, DEP said in a statement.
Asked to describe what he's seen, Walker said, "Many white colonies, some diseased colonies, and many corals that have recently died. These are identifiable by exposed fresh skeleton without any tissue or bare colonies covered with a layer of turf algae. Some sites appear to have over 50 percent of the colonies affected."
Scientists say it will be difficult for South Florida's reefs to make up for the loss of coral. Although coral larvae settle out of the water onto rocks and found new colonies, this doesn't happen to a sufficient extent to make up for the losses, Miller said.
"It's a bad situation for the corals out there right now," she said.
Bleaching episodes have increased in duration and severity in the past few decades, according to National Marine Fisheries Service. Miller said climate change is likely to be a long-term factor in increasing the number of bleaching episodes, although it would be difficult to tie any particular episode to global warming.
This year, for example, there is a strong El Niño, the periodic warming of the eastern Pacific Ocean along the equator, she said, which is a factor in the bleaching taking place across the globe.

150928-b
Florida needs $16.5B for water system infrastructure
Associated Press
September 28, 2015
With a burgeoning population and aging water systems, Florida will need $16.5 billion in funding over the next 20 years just to maintain its existing drinking water infrastructure, according to estimates from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
In most places across the country, the promise of clean, cheap, readily available water has been taken for granted, but that has begun to change. Farm runoff has polluted municipal water sources, and the aging underground networks of pipes that carry water to homes and businesses rupture all too frequently. Just as with crumbling bridges or congested highways, the solutions don't come cheap.
Replacing pipes, treatment plants and other infrastructure as well as expanding drinking water systems to handle population growth could cost as much as $1 trillion nationwide over the next quarter century. Without that investment, industry groups warn of a future with more infrastructure failures that will disrupt service, transportation and commerce.
Despite the need, the largest federal aid program for improving the nation's drinking water system has more than $1 billion sitting unspent in government accounts. That is largely because of poor management by some states and structural problems.
But the data show Florida has been successful where others have failed, spending most of the nearly $615 million it has received on improving water infrastructure in both densely populated and rural areas.
Still, the billions needed to fix the state's old water system presents a major funding and logistical challenge moving forward, one the state says it is addressing.
"We have communities in Florida with 100-year-old pipes still. Old pipes cost more to repair now, and it's got to be done over many years. It's a real headache," said Tom Friedrich, a Jacksonville-based water infrastructure expert who consults with local governments.
In addition to funding projects like water treatment facilities in densely populated areas throughout the state, Florida water officials say they use the EPA's grants to fund the Florida Rural Water Association, which gives technical support to smaller communities.
While the law allows Florida to set aside up to 31 percent of its funding for noninfrastructure projects related to drinking water, the records show the state has set aside less than 10 percent. That indicates that, unlike many other states, Florida is moving forward to fix problems more efficiently.
"Program staff is dedicated to helping local communities through our funding and application process," Dee Ann Miller, a spokesman for the Florida Department of Environmental Protection, or DEP, said in an emailed statement. "In addition, we work hard through the legislative process and through building relationships with local governments to better leverage funding opportunities."
Miller said Florida will also use money from existing loans, interest paid and Clean Water Act grants.
All of this action on water infrastructure is spurred by an intense need: Florida has long relied on groundwater to fill its cup, but as the state has grown to the nation's third-most populous, that source is dwindling.
"As communities continue to grow, the DEP shows that by 2025 we'll need an additional 2 billion gallons a day," Friedrich said.

150928-c
Interactive: How Florida uses its water
Herald-Tribune - by Jessica Floum
September 28, 2015
Florida is known to be the wettest state in the nation, but a 13-day winter cold front in 2010 sent two Hillsborough towns into a water management crisis.
Excessive groundwater pumping by strawberry farmers spraying to keep their produce alive caused wells to dry up, sinkholes to open and the amount of water available to neighboring households to plummet.
Since then, the Southwest Florida Water Management District, or Swiftmud, has taken a hard look at the cumulative effects of groundwater pumping, said Claire Muirehead, water use permit evaluation manager.
“We need to be able to provide water supply for the people that we have in our state now, but we also need to make sure that there is available water supply for future generations while also protecting the environment,” Muirehead said.
Florida pulls almost 15 billion gallons of water per day from fractures and pores beneath the Earth's surface and from existing surface water, according to data compiled by AP-APME from the U.S. Geological Survey's National Water-Use Information Program. About 14 billion gallons are used each day in households and factories and for irrigation, livestock, aquaculture, thermoelectric power plants and mining.
Hillsborough County is the biggest consumer, drawing 1.9 billion gallons per day and using 1.6 billion gallons per day on its power plants.
Sarasota and Manatee, by contrast, are among the counties that pump the least amount of groundwater each day. Public consumption and irrigation are the biggest draws.
Public water use in Sarasota County requires about 31.3 million gallons per day, while irrigation takes 10.3 million gallons, according to the USGS. data. The county is now focusing on preparing for population growth, said Christopher Cole, Sarasota County's public utilities planning supervisor.
“It's always been a challenging process,” Cole said. “I have reports that go back to the late '60s talking about planning for future water supply to meet future demands.”
Manatee County, with a large swath of agriculture remaining, swallows 126.5 million gallons on a daily basis, with 84.9 million gallons going to irrigation. It is the ninth largest user of irrigated water in the state. Palm Beach and Hendry top the list.
The statewide picture
Statewide, electric power plants are among the largest users of water.
They boil the precious resource to drive their steam-driven turbine generators, then use it to cool their power producing equipment and the hot water before discharge. They also use water for scrubbing and other forms of pollution abatement.
The counties that pull the most water are the ones fueling and cooling thermoelectric plants. The fact that power plants are such gluttons for water is why they are built along lakes and rivers. But since the 1970s, power plants have relied increasingly on reclaimed water from sewage plants.
“We now have 10 power plants in the district using reclaimed water and we are continuing to encourage anyone who has a power plant to use reclaimed water,” said Anthony Andrade, Swiftmud's reuse coordinator.
The Big Bend plant in Apollo Beach uses it. So does the City of Tampa's waste-to-energy facility on McKay Bay and the Duke Energy plant in Bartow.
“The wonderful thing about Florida is that farms and power plants need that water in different seasons,” Andrade said. “Power plants need it most in the summer when it rains and lot, and farms need it in the winter when it's dry.”
Florida's five water management districts have encouraged use of reclaimed water across industries in order to reduce demand for groundwater pumping and promote water conservation.
“We have to balance the water use between the environment and our needs,” Cole said. “We can't use all the water and not leave any for nature.”

150927-a
As governor, Bush sided with campaign contributor on delaying Everglades pollution cleanup
Tampa Bay Times – by Craig Pittman, Staff Writer
September 27, 2015
In a speech last week, Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush called for rolling back government regulations on oil drilling, carbon emissions and other activities, arguing that red tape is hindering the growth of the economy.
Unlike other leading Republican presidential candidates, Bush has experience in this area. He can point to his record while governor of rolling back Florida environmental regulations — although one rollback in particular brought him sharp criticism from politicians from his own party.
The rollback concerned Bush's signature environmental initiative, saving the Everglades. And it benefited Florida's sugar industry, now a major donor to his Right to Rise Super PAC.
Bush boasted in the most recent debate that nobody owns him, but some would argue that what happened in 2003 may undermine that claim.
"The sugar industry owns everybody in Tallahassee, and it doesn't matter if you're a Democrat or a Republican," said veteran Audubon of Florida activist Charles Lee. "I can't blame Jeb any more than all the other governors and legislative leaders who have buckled under sugar's pressure over the years."
During Bush's eight years as governor, he left a distinctive mark on several environmental programs. He launched the state's first comprehensive effort to save its declining springs, an initiative later shut down by Gov. Rick Scott. He oversaw the acquisition of thousands of acres of environmentally sensitive land, a program later drained of money by the Legislature.
By far his most ambitious project was the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Program. The program, originally expected to take 20 years and cost $8.7 billion, mapped out a way to re-plumb the fading River of Grass with a system of pumps, levees, canals and wells that would make its flow mimic its original one. It would also provide water for the continued development of South Florida.
With Bush's backing the Everglades bill sailed through the Legislature in 2000 as easily as its federal companion passed Congress. On Dec. 11, 2000, Bush stood next to then-President Bill Clinton as Clinton signed Everglades restoration into law.
Why would an antitax, anti-government crusader like Bush back an expensive public works program to save a vast, unoccupied marsh?
"He sensed that it was legacy stuff," explained Allison DeFoor, a former Monroe County judge who served as Bush's so-called Everglades czar. "If you're from South Florida, you sense that (the Everglades) ties everything together — the environment, the economy, water, farming, jobs, you name it. … He really cared."
Bush's Everglades success "is evidence it is possible to manage restoration of this national treasure in a fiscally sound way," presidential campaign spokeswoman Kristy Campbell said, and shows how he'll tackle similar problems as president.
A crucial ally in getting the legislation passed, DeFoor said, was the sugar industry.
"They're the biggest landowners down there," he explained. "It's impossible to have any policy go through without them."
Companies such as U.S. Sugar and Flo-Sun had also been major contributors to both Bush's Foundation for Florida's Future and to the Republican Party of Florida, which bankrolled Bush's successful 1998 campaign.
The Everglades restoration program focused on water quantity. The sugar industry was more concerned about water quality.
The Everglades cannot tolerate more than a microscopic amount of phosphorous flowing through its sawgrass. Runoff from sugar farms has long contained too much phosphorous, wiping out the sawgrass and spreading cattails, which are all wrong for the wildlife found in the Everglades.
A 1994 law called the Everglades Forever Act set a deadline of 2006 for eliminating that pollution. But as the deadline crept closer, sugar executives decided they needed more time.
In 2003, the industry deployed more than 40 lobbyists in Tallahassee to push a bill — unveiled halfway through the session — that said the water didn't need to be clean by then.
Instead, it said, all that had to be done by then was to adopt a plan to stop the pollution. It also used language such as "to the maximum extent practicable" and "earliest practicable date." The industry's goal: push the cleanup deadline back to 2026.
Legislators from both parties, who counted the sugar companies as major contributors, quickly jumped to pass the bill. It became a steamroller that no environmental group could stop, no matter how often they called it the "Everglades Whenever Act." (Among the House members who voted for it: future U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio.)
David B. Struhs, Bush's Department of Environmental Protection secretary, had once vowed to meet the 2006 deadline. When he testified in favor of the delay at a committee hearing, a Times reporter pursued him through the Capitol seeking an explanation of his reversal. Cornered at last, Struhs blamed his flip-flop on what he called "political reality."
Influential Republicans in Congress, such as Appropriations Committee chairman C.W. Bill Young, objected. They warned that delaying the pollution cleanup could jeopardize the overall Everglades restoration program. They urged Bush to veto the bill.
Then another party weighed in: the Miami federal judge overseeing a Justice Department lawsuit against the state over Everglades pollution. In a blistering order, Senior U.S. District Judge William Hoeveler wrote that he was "deeply troubled" by the bill and dismayed it was passed so quickly that it "seemed calculated to avoid federal participation or public scrutiny."
In a subsequent interview the judge told the Times Bush was "a good man" but "I'm afraid he fell into the hands of those who don't like the Everglades."
Bush lashed out at critics of the bill, which now changed the deadline to 2016. Legislative leaders said they took their direction from him.
"We did this bill because the governor said it was a good bill," Senate President Jim King, R-Jacksonville, said then.
When he finally signed it into law — behind closed doors, outside public scrutiny — Bush called the bill "strong legislation built on good policy."
The Miccosukee Tribe of Indians, which lives in the Everglades, sued, as did the environmental group founded by Marjory Stoneman Douglas.
U.S. Sugar spokeswoman Judy Sanchez said last week that the 2003 law "has been a landmark success" because the amount of phosphorus flowing off the industry's land has been cut every year.
However, it still hasn't hit the purity level required for the River of Grass, said Tom Van Lent, director of science of the Everglades Foundation. Once Bush allowed the deadline to be pushed back, he said, "since that time till now there has been a deterioration of the general health of the Everglades."
It took Scott to resolve the problem. In 2012 he cut a deal with the Environmental Protection Agency to spend $880 million on filter marshes and other structures to clean up the phosphorus.
Because of the construction schedule on those structures, Van Lent said, "we're today looking at 2025 as the date for compliance." That's just a year short of what the sugar industry wanted.

150927-b
Big issues for Martin County in 2016 legislative session: water and sand
Palm Beach Post – by Sally Swartz, a former member of The Post Editorial Board
September 27, 2015
Two members of Martin County’s legislative delegation listened for hours last week while more than 30 residents buttered them up, begged for money, griped about the Florida legislature’s recent bad decisions and brought wish lists for 2016.
Rep. Gayle Harrell, R-Stuart, turned the annual event, held at the Martin Commission headquarters in Stuart, into a bit of a schmooze fest. Her nonstop upbeat comments, an overload of thank-yous to each petitioner, and personal observations cut the public’s speaking time at the end from three to two minutes.
Sen. Joe Negron, R-Palm City, seemingly silenced by Harrell’s persistent perkiness, asked a few questions and occasionally took off on a topic that interested him. Rep. MaryLynn Magar, R-Tequesta, and Sen. Denise Grimsley, R-Sebring, were no-shows.
Water and sand were two big issues, with about a dozen people complaining about lawmakers’ failure to use Amendment 1 money to buy conservation lands and waters, as a huge majority of Florida residents voted they must. Harrell promised she will introduce new legislation to provide enough money for Everglades restoration.
Both Harrell and Negron said they’re outraged at the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ plans to try to steal sand offshore from Martin and St. Lucie counties and send it to nourish beaches in Miami-Dade.
The two are confident they can stop the sand heist. “Miami could buy better and cleaner sand from the Bahamas,” Negron said.
The same battle emerged almost a decade ago and then-Sen. Ken Pruitt, R-Port St. Lucie, saved the sand. It’s needed to lessen the impact of hurricanes and to protect flora and fauna on the ocean’s bottom.
Florida Oceanographic Society director and Rivers Coalition spokesman Mark Perry warned the lawmakers that trouble already is brewing again on Lake Okeechobee. The lake is now at 14 feet, and rising six inches a week during recent rains. With an El Nino’s heavy rains predicted for the winter ahead, conditions are similar to those in 1997-98, Perry said.
That winter, St. Lucie and Caloosahatchee estuaries were devastated by heavy dumping from Lake Okeechobee into east and west coast waters. Fish developed lesions and rotting flesh, pelicans and other seabirds got sick, and Treasure Coast waters weren’t safe for people. Tourists went elsewhere and local businesses suffered.
Dr. Edie Widder, director of the Ocean Research and Conservation Association, asked for an extra $500,000 in addition to the $2 million spent so far on “Kilroy” devices in Treasure Coast waters to monitor water quality and identify pollutants and their sources.
Several people continued to urge Negron and Harrell to support buying land south of Lake Okeechobee for Everglades restoration, but an Economic Council spokesman, stuck to the script the sugar industry promotes: Complete existing projects before buying more land.
Janine Landolina, organizer of Floridians Against Fracking, said 45 counties and cities have passed local amendments restricting fracking, a controversial method of extracting oil by pumping chemicals underground under high pressure, “because it’s not being done on a state level.” Another speaker urged lawmakers to regulate liquid natural gas being transported by rail and on highways, citing horrific accidents worldwide as a warning.
Off the topic of water woes and environmental problems, Karlette Peck of the Florida Health Department’s Martin office made a strong plea for help for elementary school children, who are turning up in emergency rooms needing immediate help with painful dental problems.
Those who don’t breathe easy when lawmakers are at work in Tallahassee may wish they could borrow some of Harrell’s optimism to deal with the bad news she revealed as Thursday’s session ended. Legislators reconvene next year on Jan. 11, about a month earlier than usual. Harrell — and Negron — may need all the perkiness they can muster to deal with that.

150927-c
Confront climate change now, not later
Miami Herald - by Daniella Levine Cara
September 27, 20115
Sea-level rise is a imminent threat to the region
The tide is rising; that is no longer in doubt. Miami-Dade must prepare for sea-level rise made inevitable by the billions of tons of greenhouse gases already dumped into the atmosphere worldwide. We exist on a sliver of ground between the Everglades and the Atlantic Ocean only made dry by a complex network of canals and locks. We measure our elevation above the sea in single digits, making South Florida internationally recognized as one of the most vulnerable places on Earth to sea-level rise.
Climate change presents a host of challenges for our future, but none nearer to the present than sea-level rise. Data from the South Florida Water Management District shows that nearly half of the drainage capacity of our canals would be lost with a mere six inches of sea-level rise, potentially turning what are now normal rainfalls into damaging floods. A greater rise would have sea water push inland, constraining our primary drinking-water source and septic and stormwater drainage systems would begin to fail with regularity.
Recently, an impressive “rising tide” of civic activists, including articulate and inspiring high school students, spoke before the County Commission demanding that we work faster to find solutions to problems that we will otherwise be abandoning to their generation. Their passionate and powerful words of frustration and hope for our future must be a clarion call for bold action.
I came to office 10 months ago thinking we could move quickly beyond studies to action on this issue. I had anticipated that with Miami-Dade being a party to the Southeast Florida Climate Change Compact (a four-county collaborative), and having studied the issue in depth for several years through the Climate Change Advisory Task Force, and in even greater detail with the Sea Level Rise Task Force, we would be ready to execute adaptation plans.
But, sadly, we are not.
Fortunately we are moving forward in some critical areas. We recently adopted our Sea Level Rise Task Force’s recommendations, and receive quarterly updates on those reports to guide our planning. Our Water & Sewer department has integrated sea-level rise projections into major construction projects, and has developed a new computer tool to model how underground water movement responds to changes in sea level. The Commission adopted my resolution calling for a refresh of our “GreenPrint” sustainability plan which will update climate change strategies, and Miami-Dade will continue to pursue the purchase of critical wetland habitat in the far southern reaches of the county through our Environmentally Endangered Lands program. These are great steps, but there is much more to do.
I championed the county becoming part of the Rockefeller 100 Resilient Cities challenge and am delighted by the Miami Foundation’s stewardship and County Mayor Carlos Gimenez’s support. In response to this opportunity and, more important, to the demands of the public, the mayor is recasting our Sustainability Office as the Office of Resilience and putting funds toward the advancement of the plans coming from the Sea Level Rise Task Force. We must continue to collaborate and seek the best ideas from cities around the world like the U.S.-China Climate Change Summit where Mayor Gimenez and I shared ideas with local officials. Climate change must be addressed locally to achieve global impact.
The county and our local government partners must step up the pace of climate-change adaptation. We must move faster to advance Everglades Restoration and redesign our water delivery and disposal systems in the face of climate change. We must protect and expand natural systems along our coasts and low lying areas to provide a buffer to sea level rise. And we must reevaluate where we build and how we build.
The seas are rising and, if ignored, will harm the most vulnerable among us first, as any disaster inevitably does. We have an opportunity to show the nation and the world how to become a sustainable and vibrant city in the face of climate change, but we must act now. I commend Mayor Gimenez and my colleagues for having taken important steps. I especially commend the rising tide of civic activists who powerfully made their case during this budget season. We must do more. The seas will not wait.

150926-
Cities bear rising cost of keeping water safe to drink
Associated Press – by John Seewer, Toledo, OH
September 26, 2015
Standing at the edge of the Great Lakes, the world's largest surface source of fresh water, this city of 280,000 seems immune from the water-supply problems that bedevil other parts of the country. But even here, the promise of an endless tap can be a mirage.
Algae blooms in Lake Erie, fed by agriculture runoff and overflowing sewers, have become so toxic that they shut down Toledo's water system in 2014 for two days. The city is considering spending millions of dollars to avoid a repeat.
Similar concerns about water quality are playing out elsewhere. Farm fertilizers, discarded pharmaceuticals, industrial chemicals and even saltwater from rising oceans are seeping into many of the aquifers, reservoirs and rivers that supply Americans with drinking water.
Combating these growing threats means cities and towns must tap new water sources, upgrade aging treatment plants and install miles of pipeline, at tremendous cost.
Consider tiny Pretty Prairie, Kansas, less than an hour's drive west of Wichita, where the water tower and cast-iron pipes need to be replaced and state regulators are calling for a new treatment plant to remove nitrates from farm fertilizers. The fixes could cost the town's 310 water customers $15,000 each.
Emily Webb never gave a second thought to the town's water until she became pregnant almost two years ago. That's when she learned through a notice in the mail that the water could cause what's known as "blue baby" syndrome, which interferes with the blood's ability to carry oxygen.
"It just kind of scared me," she said. "Now we don't drink it at all."
Instead, she and her husband stock up on well water from her parents' home and buy bottled water even though health officials say the risk is limited to infants. When it comes time to buy their first home, she said, they will look somewhere else.
Pretty Prairie's leaders hope to find a less expensive solution. They say the cost of a new treatment plant would drive people away and threaten the farm town's survival.
Across the country, small towns and big cities alike are debating how much they can afford to spend to make contaminated water fit for drinking.
Cash-strapped cities worry that an unfair share of the costs are being pushed onto poor residents. Rural water systems say they can't expect the few people they serve to pay for multimillion-dollar projects.
The U.S Conference of Mayors, in a report released this summer, found spending by local governments on all water-supply projects nearly doubled to $19 billion between 2000 and 2012. Despite a slowdown in recent years, it remained at an all-time high, the report said.
"We have a real dilemma on our hands," said Richard Anderson, author of the report. "We know we need to increase spending on water, but many houses can't afford it, and Congress won't increase funding."
In California's Central Valley, low-income farming communities have gone without clean water for years because they don't have money to build plants to remove uranium, arsenic and nitrates. Drinking fountains at schools have been put off limits, and families spend a large share of their income on bottled water.
A study released in June by the U.S. Geological Survey found nearly one-fifth of the groundwater used for public drinking systems in California contained excessive levels of potentially toxic contaminants.
Compounding the problem is the drought. Because farmers are using more groundwater for irrigation, contaminants are becoming more concentrated in the aquifers and seeping into new wells.
The drought has pushed Los Angeles to plan for the nation's largest groundwater cleanup project, a $600 million plan to filter groundwater contaminated with toxic chemicals left over from the aerospace and defense industry. Some of the water will be drawn from polluted wells abandoned 30 years ago.
In the Midwest, where shortages typically have not been a concern, more attention is being paid to farming's effect on drinking water supplies.
Minnesota's governor this year ordered farmers to plant vegetation instead of crops along rivers, streams and ditches to filter runoff. The water utility in Des Moines, Iowa's largest city, is suing three rural counties to force tighter regulations on farm discharges.
And in the wake of Toledo's water crisis, Ohio has put limits on when and where farmers can spread fertilizer and manure on fields.
"But no one really knows how well that works," said Chuck Campbell, the city's water treatment supervisor.
Given that, the city has spent $5 million in the past year to bolster its ability to cleanse water drawn from Lake Erie. It is planning a renovation that could approach $350 million and include a system that uses ozone gas to destroy toxins produced by the algae. A 56 percent water rate increase is footing most of the bill.
In many coastal areas, rising seas mean saltwater can intrude into underground aquifers and in some cases ruin existing municipal wells. It's especially problematic in the Southeast, from Hilton Head Island in South Carolina to Florida's seaside towns near Miami.
"Nature's calling the shots and we're reacting," said Keith London, a city commissioner in Hallandale Beach, Florida, where six of eight freshwater wells are no longer usable.
The city is considering relocating wells, upgrading its treatment plant or buying water from a neighboring town.
The water that comes out of the tap in the oceanside town of Edisto Beach, South Carolina, is so salty that it corrodes dishwashers and washing machines within just a few years, resident Tommy Mann said.
While technically safe to drink, it tastes so bad that the town gives away up to five gallons of purified water a day to residents and vacationers.
Voters narrowly rejected a proposal two years ago that would have doubled water rates to pay for an $8.5 million reverse-osmosis filtering system.
Said Mann: "We're living in a beautiful little town with Third World water."

150925-a
County approves Deseret development plan
AroundOsceola - by Ken Jackson, Staff Writer
September 25, 2015
Project still faces opposition.
Osceola County commissioners Monday approved a long-range plan to eventually develop the North Ranch area in the northeast part of the county that took into consideration objections raised and comments made by state officials earlier this summer.
But the plan put forth by the Deseret Ranch still has its detractors, including Karina Veaudry of NFC Landscape Architects, who represents the Florida Native Plants Society.
“Our concerns are not fully addressed,” she said, noting that the conservation element of the plan is “woefully inadequate” for a plan of this size (133,000 acres, about three times the size of the Osceola County portion of Poinciana). “The three ecological experts analyzed that the area set aside for conservation is below the minimum for viable conservation and water resources for future use.”
On July 24, the Florida Department of Economic Opportunity completed a review of the North Ranch Sector Plan, which county officials transmitted to Tallahassee in May.
Following meetings with FDEO and other review agencies involved, changes were made to the plan, which by 2080 could be home to 493,000 people and 83 million square feet of retail, office, industrial and institutional space on the North Ranch Sector.
Revisions were also made in response to recommendations made by an environmental stakeholder’s group. A 44-page peer review, written by Florida ecology and wildlife experts Jay Exum, Richard Hilsenbeck and Reed Noss, was not included in the sector plan, but Deseret officials said Monday that review is public record and can be viewed by anyone.
Jeff Jones, the county’s Director of Strategic Initiatives, said the state’s objections centered around requiring conservation and agriculture lands where high-density housing would be prohibited, clarifying where major roadways and framework roads would go and the form of urban areas.
“We went up to Tallahassee to review the changes with them, generally they were pleased with what we had offered up to them,” Jones said.
After a meeting with environmental groups on Sept. 4, further changes were made regarding water conservation, including clarifying the development plans and intent for building a reservoir, and making sure transportation hubs are built with minimal environmental impact.
“The changes we’ve introduced fully address their concerns and issues,” Jones said.
That Pennywash/Wolf Creek reservoir, which would create a water supply for the new development, is cause for concern, Veaudry said.
“The law states if it’s in the sector plan, it must be incorporated into the regional water supply plan,” she said. “If it’s a ‘maybe’, we don’t want to see it in there with the potential to destroy thousands of acres of forested wetlands. The St. John’s Water Management District doesn’t want to see this happen.”
The county is the co-applicant of the plan with Farmland Reserve, Inc., the Deseret Ranch’s development arm, which Veaudry says creates a problem.
“It’s rare, because counties generally want to take the upper hand on a developer,” she said. “This plan basically blanketed every square inch of it with development. That’s urban sprawl, which is what we’re trying to get away from. Environmental groups have enough evidence to challenge it legally. It’s not imminent, but the county has opened itself up to that possibility because for the poor decisions made.”
Charles Lee, Director of Advocacy for the Florida Audubon Society, a leading voice for conservationists since the North Ranch Sector Plan was first presented to the Board in 2014 and a loud critic of plan’s original water conservation measures, took a different approach Monday, giving the revised plan his support.
“Sincere, open discussions have led to the betterment of this plan,” he said. “We have no objections moving forward with this plan, everyone’s done a pretty good job in their participation.”
Commission Chairman Brandon Arrington said waiting a few months after getting the sector plan back from the DEO in July to get more feedback resulted in a more agreeable plan.
“The idea was with a little more discussion from a lot of folks, we could come up with a better plan,” he said. “We’ve done that, it did what I hoped it would. If we can meet in the middle like we have, I think we’ve done a great job.”
The sector plan, now approved, becomes subject to the county’s mixed-use policies since it is outside of the county’s current Urban Growth Boundary.
The plan will likely see years of revisions and adjustments to meet new standards for water and native plant conservation as they are amended. Another level of development planning will also need to occur.
Development on the North Ranch likely wouldn’t occur until 2060; the Northeast District, a smaller tract west of the North Ranch, would be developed first.

150925-b
DEP, Gov. Scott have earned environmentalists' distrust
Daily Commercial
September 25, 2015
Florida’s version of a modern range war is a dispute over whether to allow more public conservation land in state parks to be grazed by privately owned cattle.
The state has proposed expanding grazing as a way to increase revenues for the state park system, and to help manage and maintain the lands. Opponents fear letting cattle into natural areas of the parks could harm water quality.
The primary path to a resolution isn’t objective science, it’s subjective trust. The Florida Department of Environmental Protection under Gov. Rick Scott has earned skepticism about its motives for seeking changes in the policy and commitment to maintaining the integrity of the parks.
The state already permits cattle to graze in six state parks and on thousands of acres of water management district lands. However, its proposal to allow the practice at Myakka River State Park near Sarasota and Paynes Prairie State Park between Ocala and Gainesville and Myakka River State Park near Sarasota has been put on hold. Opponents are concerned that unlike with previous grazing programs that occurred on former pasturelands, the expanded grazing would be on natural lands, which they believe would be disturbed by watering and feeding stations for the cattle that could affect water quality.
One of their biggest complaints is a common one: The proposals have not been fully vetted in a public setting. There has been plenty of correspondence behind the scenes between DEP officials and ranchers, but the agency has curtailed opportunities for public comments at open meetings.
The Scott administration has a bad habit of making public policy changes with little notice or public discussion. That includes new DEP head Jon Steverson recently purging senior staff members from water management districts with no explanation.
The Scott administration last month intervened in the South Florida Water Management District after its governing board voted 6-2 to maintain its current tax rate, rather than implement the lower “rolled-back rate.” The governor wasn’t happy, and after pressure from Tallahassee the board later reversed itself and adopted the lower rate. Two weeks ago, though, the water management district’s executive director abruptly resigned and the board unanimously agreed to appoint a permanent successor without a search.
That successor just happened to be Pete Antonacci, Scott’s former general counsel and a key figure in the Gerald Bailey fiasco. Bailey was the head of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement who was forced by the governor’s office to resign for political reasons. His ouster and the subsequent Cabinet approval of his successor occurred without public discussion or vote, a violation of Florida’s Sunshine Law that resulted in a $55,000 fine.
On Scott’s watch, the state has attempted to allow private golf courses in state parks and add privatized RV camping to them.
The state can assuage these fears by being more open and accommodating with its proposals, by cultivating trust instead fanning flames of paranoia and cynicism.

150925-c
Environmental groups appeal SWFMD's approval of Neal Compound on Perico
Bradenton Times - Staff Report
September 25, 2015
BRADENTON — Suncoast Waterkeeper, Sierra Club, Florida Institute for Saltwater Heritage, Manasota-88 and Joseph McClash have filed an appeal to a recent ruling by the Southwest Florida Water Management District that deviated from an Administrative Law Judge's recommended order to approve an environmental permit that would allow developer Pat Neal to destroy an acre of high-quality wetlands to build what he has described as a family compound of four houses on Perico Island.
The permit was approved by a 10-1 vote of the SWFWMD board, despite a lengthy finding of facts in the ALJ's recommended order detailing why the water management district should not issue the permit. The Army Corps of Engineers had also weighed in previously against the proposed development.
"Reasonable assurances were not provided that the proposed project is clearly in the public interest because of the adverse cumulative effects on the conservation of fish and wildlife, fishing and recreational values, and marine productivity of Anna Maria Sound, an Outstanding Florida Water,” wrote Judge Bram D. E. Canter in his recommended order.
"It resembles the kind of project that was common in the 1960s and 1970s in Florida, before the enactment of environmental regulatory programs, when high-quality wetlands were destroyed by dredging and filling to create land for residential development.”
"The project, the developer, and SWFWMD’s actions are a reminder that the progress made over the last 40 years since the enactment of the Clean Water Act is being swept aside by wealthy, connected developers and their political cronies within the Scott administration," said the group in a press release announcing the appeal. "This project in particular reeks of cronyism. The motion to approve the permit was made by Carlos Beruff, the Manatee County developer, friend of Pat Neal and owner of Medallion Homes. Instead of abstaining from participating in this matter, which appears to be a conflict of interest, Beruff led the vote to approve as his last act on the Board, resigning the following day."
Justin Bloom, founder and executive director of Suncoast Waterkeeper said of the group's intention, "We’re holding the line on protecting our coastal mangrove systems and moreover, on safeguarding our community’s environmental protections from corrupt developers and their political cronies. Agency decisions like these send a message to the public that money and influential friends still trump good policy, governance and the public interest. We think the appellate court will see this subversion for what it is.”
Attorney Ralf Brookes, who represented the Sierra Club said, "We agree with the findings and conclusions of the Administrative Law Judge. It is important to preserve these mature mangrove wetlands on site because they provide natural storm protection, prevent erosion and provide important habitat for wildlife here in Anna Maria Sound near the historic fishing village of Cortez. It is important to protect our remaining mangrove wetlands as valuable natural resources especially in aquatic preserves and outstanding Florida waters."

150925-d
Florida Tech scientists: Indian River Lagoon improving
MyNews.com – by Jerry Hume, Brevard County Reporter
September 25, 2015
MELBOURNE -- The Indian River Lagoon may have turned a corner.
Scientists at the Florida Institute of Technology say water quality is improving after years of dead dolphins, manatees and fish washing ashore.
"I think things are improving," said Robert Weaver, assistant professor of ocean engineering at Florida Tech. "They've seen some of the sea grass rebounding, but there's definitely still work to be done."
Weaver is helping Florida Tech kick off its first ever Indian River Lagoon Research Institute Technical Conference, which takes place Friday and Saturday.
Scientists, researchers, engineers and residents will look at how to improve the health of the ecologically and economically important estuary in Brevard County.
Engineers are working to remove muck from the Indian River in an effort to help the sea grass grow. Mock and nutrients have hampered the growth of sea grass, which is a main food source for marine life.
Another option that will be discussed at the conference is using a pipe to flush ocean water into the lagoon near Port Canaveral.
"It gets the water that's in the lagoon moving and, eventually, it's going to go back out into the ocean through an inlet system," Weaver said. "So, we're not actually removing any nutrients. We're just transporting them from in the lagoon to out into the ocean."
Another way to reduce nutrients from the lagoon is a rainy season ban on fertilizer use. Currently, all Space Coast county and city governments have banned the use of nutrient-harmful fertilizers during the rainy season.
Scientists said reintroducing oysters into the lagoon can help filter the water.
Brevard Zoo officials will be distributing tiny baby oysters to homeowners along the lagoon Friday and Saturday to help grow the oyster population.

150925-e
Millions remain unspent in federal Water-System Loan Program
Associated Press - by Ryan J. Foley
September 25, 2015
The largest federal aid program for improving the nation's drinking water systems has struggled to spend money in a timely fashion despite demand for assistance that far exceeds the amount available, a review by The Associated Press shows.
Project delays, poor management by some states and structural problems have contributed to nearly $1.1 billion in congressional appropriations sitting unspent in Drinking Water State Revolving Fund accounts as of Aug. 1. The backlog is smaller than it once was, but federal data show that many states are not on track to meet a goal set by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which wants any money dating back to 2013 to be spent by next year.
In addition, states are using an increasing share of money on other drinking water services instead of investing in infrastructure. About 1 in 5 dollars in recent years has gone to purposes such as paying the salaries of state employees and contractors. Those expenses are allowable but leave less for the repair and replacement of leaky pipes, deteriorating treatment plants and century-old storage tanks.
Congress established the revolving fund in 1996 as a way to provide low-interest loans to cities, counties and utilities to help pay for maintaining aging water systems. In recent years, lawmakers have approved $900 million annually for the program, but they are considering a deep cut for next year.
When loans are not issued and grant money isn't spent, "needed drinking water improvements are not implemented, communities do not receive the intended health benefits and states miss opportunities to infuse funds into the state's economy and create jobs," the agency's inspector general warned last year. The warning came in a report that singled out some states for giving out too few loans and leaving too much unspent.
The EPA awards annual allotments to states based on a national survey of infrastructure needs conducted every four years. States then have some flexibility to decide how to distribute the money to projects, based first on public-health considerations.
The law requires that every state receive at least 1 percent of the appropriation, which means small, largely rural states have enjoyed a disproportionate share. A dozen states with populations of less than 2 million have received the highest per-capita funding levels, while large states such as California, Texas and Florida are near the bottom, the AP analysis shows.
But actually spending the money has been a challenge for states big and small.
"It's not a bad problem to have — too much money," said Danielle Shuryn, who helps run New Mexico's program, which recently increased its hiring of employees and contractors as it tries to reduce its backlog of unspent money.
Acknowledging past shortcomings, states such as California and Texas have overhauled their programs to better move projects to completion and spend their appropriations faster. The amount of unspent money has been cut in half nationally in the last four years after reaching $2.2 billion in 2011. Still, it remains an EPA concern.
Peter Grevatt, director of the EPA's office of groundwater and drinking water, said states have made "a very significant improvement" in reducing their unspent money and would continue making strides. He said the goal is to spend all money that comes in within two years — faster than federal regulations require.
State managers said some spending delays are unavoidable, given the complexity of water projects, which can take years to complete. The program's careful approach, they said, ensures money goes to worthy projects and to systems that can repay loans. Cities sometimes reject rate increases and cancel their plans, and projects get bogged down during environmental studies or in design and bidding stages.
"It's not as if the funds are being bungled or poorly spent. It's a question of delays," said Jim Taft, executive director of the Association of State Drinking Water Administrators.
The program's focus on providing loans rather than grants makes it financially sustainable as money gets repaid through water system revenues over time. But it also discourages projects in some small towns, where officials say they cannot afford to repay loans without raising water bills to unaffordable levels.
"The people who have the biggest need are the people who have the worst compliance. They can't afford to fix it," said Jeff Walker, an administrator with the Texas Water Control Board.
In Tennessee, for example, the state's top-ranked project this year is a $684,000 plan to replace leaking water lines in Gainesboro, population 1,500. The state's plan calls for the project to receive a 20-year loan in December, but Town Clerk Lisa Dodson said the only way the community would carry out the work is with a grant.
The program is also helping to build a $76 million water-treatment plant in Ames, Iowa.
Since the fund's inception, more than 11,500 projects have received assistance totaling $28 billion. Grevatt said the program has been successful but does not by itself provide enough money to meet the nation's water infrastructure needs.
The program's financial future is uncertain. Republicans who control Congress want to cut it by about $150 million a year. President Obama proposed a 30 percent increase. Supporters are rallying to its defense.
"It's benefited residents with higher quality, safer water, at a lower financial impact on their wallet," said Roger Crouse, Maine's drinking water administrator. "It's a great program."

150925-f
Putnam: Florida faces water shortfall by 2030
WMFE.org - byAmy Green
September 25, 2015
Agriculture Commissioner Adam Putnam says Florida faces a water shortfall of more than a billion gallons daily by 2030.
He addressed legislative and business leaders Friday in Orlando at the Florida Water Forum, on what he says will be the state’s largest long-term issue.
Putnam called on lawmakers to resurrect legislation for a statewide water policy. The legislation failed during the spring session.
He says a unified policy that considers water conservation and reuse will be important as the state faces a future in which shortages could cause businesses to rethink relocating to Florida.
“Water will be the new oil if we don’t get it right.”
Putnam says now is the time for the policy, when lawmakers are not influenced by a historic hurricane season or drought.
The agriculture commissioner spoke at the sixth-annual Florida Water Forum, organized by Associated Industries of Florida.
Sponsors include the Florida Farm Bureau, Orlando Utilities Commission and Florida Crystals.

150924-a
Invasive plants still a growing nuisance
Sun Sentinel – by Elinor Williams, president of Friends of Arthur R. Marshall Loxahatchee National Wildlife Refuge
September 24, 2015
I would like to thank Andy Reid for his story highlighting the problem of invasive exotic plants like melaleuca trees and Old World climbing fern. This fern is smothering the tree islands of the northern Everglades, while melaleuca, once close to being brought under control, is drying up the marshland, destroying the native plants needed for native wildlife's survival.
Invasive exotic plants are a problem on many, if not most of our 563 National Wildlife Refuges. This year the Arthur R. Marshall Loxahatchee National Wildlife Refuge received $1 million — 1/10th of the entire amount that Congress allocated for exotic control at National Wildlife Refuges across the country — but this amount falls several million dollars short of what is needed to stop their spread. The longer the problem is allowed to fester, the costs to fix it will rise exponentially.
Water, or the lack of it, has been the primary focus of efforts to restore the Everglades, but as one member of the South Florida Water Management District governing board warned, "If the Everglades are going to be saved, these exotics have to be controlled or else the ecosystem will be forever changed and lost."
Our National Wildlife Refuges contain some of our country's most important wildlife habitat, some our most breathtaking landscapes, and some of our best recreational opportunities. We must urge our representatives in Congress to stop shortchanging them.

150924-b
Will Scott's tantrum threaten Everglades restoration ?
Sun Sentinel – by Martha Musgrove
September 24, 2015
Florida Gov. Rick Scott staged a Tallahassee tantrum this month aimed at the South Florida Water Management District.
In short order and with no public explanations, Scott shredded any notion that appointed governing boards are independent, forced the resignation of the district's Executive Director Blake Guillory, whom he once recruited from a national engineering firm, and demanded Peter Antonacci, his lawyer, replace Guillory.
Why? Because the board briefly considered maintaining the district's current tax rate? (For five consecutive years the South Florida board has been cutting the district's budget, eliminating 525 jobs.) And because the governor is still mad he couldn't get the money or water-policy support he wanted from the Legislature this year, and is trying to shift the blame?
\What's important to those of us living in South Florida is that the district retains the staff and capacity to maintain the region's flood-control system, protect our water supplies and capably continue implementing the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan. Bob Graham, former Florida governor and U.S. senator, famously compares implementing CERP to open-heart surgery warning: "Once you start, you can't just quit halfway through."
Officially CERP is a "modification" of the Central and Southern Florida Flood Control Project, the network of drainage canals, pumps, gates and dikes built by the Army Corps of Engineers after widespread flooding in 1947 put downtown Fort Lauderdale waist-deep in water. The modifications aim to store water in the rainy season for use in the dry season, re-establish natural water regimes to sustain the sawgrass marshes of Everglades National Park and the state's conservation areas and reduce destructive drainage discharges into South Florida's estuaries.
Getting things "just right" isn't easy and it isn't cheap. The CERP plan detailed 68 projects to be built over 30 years at a projected cost of $7.8 billion. Costs are shared 50/50 by the state and federal governments. Fifteen years after starting, costs are projected at $17.5 billion. So, it's fair to ask: Are we halfway through yet?
The quick and short answer is "no," but it's a trick question because the answer depends on what's counted.
For example, under Gov. Jeb Bush the state moved quickly to buy land; 63 percent of what's needed has been bought. CERP also presumed "foundation projects" would be completed. These include Kissimmee River and Picayune Strand restorations and a series of projects to improve freshwater deliveries to Everglades National Park.
All are scheduled to be complete in the next four years, but they're not CERP projects and won't be counted on that ledger. Lastly, CERP presumed an annual construction revenue stream of $400 million ($200 million from Congress, another $200 million from the state) that hasn't been sustained.
"The start was slow," concedes Shannon Estenoz, director of the U.S. Department of Interior's Everglades Restoration Initiatives office in Davie, "We didn't have a problem solving capacity … now that we've figured out how to bundle projects, we're moving at a faster clip. I think we can get it done in 15 years."
In the last three weeks, the Army Corps of Engineers sped up, issuing a $197 million construction contract to build a CERP reservoir in the Treasure Coast and asking Congress to authorize the Central Everglades Project. That project bundles six CERP projects to improve the flow of water through Conservation Area 3 in western Broward County. Next year contracts will be let to design the Broward County Water Preserves, a buffer to prevent flooding in the county's western suburbs as water levels increase in the conservation area.
"We're going to have more ribbon-cuttings and ground-breakings in the next year than ever before," Guillory had told the district governing board last month. Ironically on the day he announced his resignation, restoration-water discharges began in the Picayune Strand and, in the Everglades Agricultural Area, water was finally filling the A-1 Flow Equalization Basin. The FEB is a key feature of the governor's "Restoration Strategies" program to meet state water-quality standards and settle a pending lawsuit.
I don't know how long it will take to check off 68 projects, but there's no magic in establishing 2030 as the goal. The magic is in the very concept of Everglades Restoration — the recognition that South Florida's water is a vital natural resource to be preserved and protected, used but not abused — survives the politics du jour.

150922-
SFWMD Fiscal Year 2016 budget
SFWMD Press
September 22, 2015
Construction is complete or underway on a record number of projects.
West Palm Beach, FL - At a public hearing tonight, the South Florida Water Management District (SFWMD) Governing Board adopted a $749.6 million budget for Fiscal Year 2016 (Oct. 1, 2015 - Sept. 30, 2016). The annual budget funds the agency's core flood control and water supply missions as well as its continued progress to restore and protect the South Florida ecosystem.
"We have a robust budget that supports flood control and hurricane response, improves Everglades water quality, protects the St. Lucie and Caloosahatchee estuaries and meets water resource needs," said SFWMD Governing Board Chairman Daniel O'Keefe. "These goals were achieved with a continued commitment to maintain lower taxes for South Floridians for a fifth consecutive year."
Nearly 84 percent of the District's FY2016 budget is dedicated to enhancing operations, maintaining lands and $13 billion of infrastructure and advancing ecosystem restoration goals.  
Key Projects
The FY2016 budget supports implementing the next phases of the Governor's $880 million Restoration Strategies plan to improve Everglades water quality, including:
$46 million to increase capacity at Stormwater Treatment Area (STA) 1 West
$9 million to continue implementation of the Science Plan to help improve the water cleaning performance of the STAs
$6.9 million for design of the Mecca Shallow Impoundment and Lainhart and Masten Conveyance Improvements for the Loxahatchee River
A host of priority projects will provide significant benefits to South Florida's extensive flood control system and protect coastal estuaries, including:
$55.7 million for continued refurbishment of South Florida's flood control system
$27.7 million for design and initial construction of the Caloosahatchee River C-43 Western Basin Storage Reservoir
$45.6 million for construction progress on the C-44 Reservoir and STA to protect the St. Lucie River and Estuary
$7.2 million for construction and repairs to the Ten Mile Creek project
$31.4 million for Kissimmee River restoration
The approved budget contains a significant infusion of state revenues, totaling $126.6 million, appropriated by the Florida Legislature this year to continue and to accelerate the pace of restoration progress.
The District's annual budget is funded by a combination of ad valorem (property) taxes and other revenues such as state appropriations, federal and local sources, balances, fees, investment earnings and agricultural privilege taxes. For FY2016, $266.9 million (about 36 percent of total revenues) are provided by property taxes and $226.4 million are from accumulated reserves.
The approved millage rates for FY2016 represent $35.51 per $100,000 of taxable value in 15 of the District's 16 counties (the Okeechobee Basin). In Collier County and mainland Monroe County (the Big Cypress Basin), the tax rates represent $28.88 per $100,000 of taxable value.
For More Information:            Just the Facts: FY2016 Budget

150921-a
Congress to the Everglades’ rescue
Miami Herald – Editorial
September 21, 2015
Florida failed to purchase land to enhance River of Grass
U.S. lawmakers should approve bill that will help correct state’s lapse
Guess it’s up to Congress to come through for the Everglades. Goodness knows the state of Florida turned its back on at least one big boost the life-sustaining River of Grass needed this year.
In a perfect world, state lawmakers and the governor would have nailed down the long-negotiated deal with U.S. Sugar to buy almost 47,000 acres that it owns. The land would have filled in a missing piece of the puzzle needed to help the state store billions of gallons of water to replenish the Everglades and quench this growing state’s thirst.
The money was there, thanks to voters’ overwhelming support for Amendment 1. The deal had been forged in 2010 — though U.S. Sugar balked at the purchase price late in the game.
Rather than charging forward, state leaders looked the other way. The whole thing was supposed to be over and done with, signed, sealed, delivered by Oct. 12, the day the pact expired.
Instead of a celebratory toast in three weeks, the whole deal was toast earlier this year, when no funds were appropriated for the purchase. Now, according to the Everglades Foundation, Congress is mulling stepping into the void. It should do so with urgency.
The land the state forfeited would have gone some distance to help store, not waste, its critical water supply. There is little storage capacity, especially in the center of the state. As a result, it’s dumping billions of gallons a year into the Gulf and Atlantic. According to the Everglades Foundation, in 2013 Florida dumped 500 billion gallons of water, wasted, unused. This year, 120 billion gallons have been squandered — and that’s taking into account the precipitous decline in Lake Okeechobee’s water levels because of scant rainfall earlier this year. Imagine what water-deprived Californians would think.
The Central Everglades Planning Project, which needs congressional authorization would provide the state half of the $1.7 billion needed for the initiative. If passed, it will remove manmade barriers such as levees, so that water can flow more naturally south to the Everglades.
The state’s lack of action here is especially galling when the governor and lawmakers have been more generous than in years past with funding for the Everglades, though far less than the “record funding” as the governor claimed earlier this year. That milestone occurred under former Gov. Jeb Bush.
The Everglades are a high-value asset to this state, its environment and its economic vitality. Remember, this is only our drinking water that we’re talking about, and the habitat to sustain wildlife, which also sustains the fishing industry and recreational tourism and … you get the idea.
It’s a shame that Gov. Rick Scott and Florida lawmakers didn’t. Florida’s congressional lawmakers should lead their colleagues to a more forward-looking conclusion.

150921-b
Florida lawmakers should act on land acquisition
MyPalmBeachPost - Editorial
September 21, 2015
Appalled that the Legislature has thumbed its nose at a super-majority of Florida voters, environmental groups have gone to court to force lawmakers to abide by Water and Land Conservation Amendment 1.
In a lawsuit filed in Circuit Court in Leon County, the groups charge that the Legislature and its leaders violated the state constitution. They want an injunction forcing Chief Financial Officer Jeff Atwater to transfer $237 million from the general fund to the Land Acquisition Trust Fund.
It’s too bad that advocates have to go to court to force the legislators to do what they should be doing on their own. But if that’s what it takes, then bring in the lawyers.
An extraordinary 75 percent of voters approved the amendment at the ballot box last year. That thundering “yes” vote changed the state constitution; for two decades, about $700 million a year is to be poured into the Land Acquisition Trust Fund. Source of the money: one-third of the revenues collected on the so-called documentary stamp tax applied to real estate transactions.
The intention is clear: to acquire and restore conservation and recreation lands. Lands such as panther habitat in southwest Florida. Tropical hammocks in the Florida Keys. The Everglades.
Instead, the Legislature approved, and Gov. Rick Scott signed, a budget in June that provided only $50 million in land acquisition and $59 million for Everglades restoration — far less than the $740 million that was available.
More galling, $237 million of the dedicated Amendment 1 revenue went toward ordinary operating expenses, as though it were general fund money.
That includes $174 million on salaries and overhead for state agency personnel and $38 million for sewage treatment plants and stormwater infrastructure.
Most maddening of all: more than $1 million for insurance to protect state agencies from Civil Rights Act violations, and state tort law and workers’ compensation claims.
With a straight face, legislative leaders said by approving items like these, they faithfully complied with the amendment’s intention to “acquire, restore, improve, and manage conservation lands. …”
Not according to the Florida Wildlife Federation, St. Johns Riverkeeper, Environmental Confederation of Southwest Florida and Sierra Club, which filed suit on August 28.
Lawmakers moved to have the case dismissed. They argue that allocation of Amendment 1 dollars is at the discretion of the Legislature. They also say the environmental groups ignore “the separation of powers” by asking the court to order a transfer of money.
The court should reject the lawmakers’ arguments. If it is true that only the Legislature may allocate dollars, then a ballot measure like Amendment 1, which dedicates revenue for a specific purpose, is meaningless.
Not so many years ago, Florida led the nation in environmental land purchases through programs such as Preservation 2000 and Florida Forever, which, too, used doc stamp money for funds. But with the recession, the Legislature sharply cut back.
The ballot amendment was an effort to get the land-buying program back into gear. Many legislators hated the idea from the start. “The wrong way for government to work,” said state Sen. Joe Negron, R-Stuart.
Nevertheless, it got 4.2 million votes in November, more than any politician (including Scott). Eric Draper, executive director of Audubon Florida, called the victory “the biggest thing that ever happened for the environment in Florida.”
But to foes like Sen. Alan Hays, R-Umatilla, the 4.2 million represents merely “roughly 20 percent, or one in five of the nearly 20 million people who call our state home.” After belittling the outcome, they went into session and did their best to ignore it.
The Legislature has refused to carry out the people’s will on an issue that Floridians have shown to be of paramount importance: trying to keep as much as possible of our dwindling natural land from being consumed by development. We must now look to judges to set things right.

150921-c
Foreign plants threatening to sabotage Everglades restoration
Sun Sentinel – by Andy Reid
September 21, 2015
The Everglades are at risk from invading foreign plants, including melaleuca and Old World Climbing Fern.
Fast-growing foreign plants are spreading across the Loxahatchee National Widllife Refuge.
Like a zombie attack on the Everglades, invading foreign plants are threatening to overwhelm Florida's famed River of Grass.
Wildlife management officials acknowledge they are losing the fight against exotic plants smothering or squeezing out the sawgrass, tree islands and marshes in the Loxahatchee National Wildlife Refuge — the northern reaches of the Everglades.
At least $3.1 billion of taxpayers' money has already been invested in trying to save the Everglades. Now state and federal officials say it will take another big infusion of cash to fend off the horde of fast-spreading plants at risk of gobbling up habitat relied on by everything from alligators to endangered snail kites.
Even after years of spraying herbicides and yanking out the invaders by hand, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service maintains it won't be able to meet a 2017 deadline to control the growing population of melaleuca trees and Old World Climbing Fern in the refuge.
"It's something we take very serious," said Rolf Olson, who oversees the refuge for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which manages the refuge for the state. "We have a lot of regrowth. Quite frankly, it's depressing."
The problem is money, according to state leaders. They say the federal government needs to spend more to stamp out these exotic plants that grow out of control thanks to South Florida's climate and a lack of natural predators.
It will take an infusion of $25 million over five years and another $2 million to $3 million a year after that to pay for getting control of the melaleuca and Old World Climbing Fern in the wildlife refuge, according to the South Florida Water Management District.
And that's on top of the about $2 million a year already being spent to kill and remove the fast-spreading plants.
Instead of waiting for slow-moving Congress to deliver additional funding try to stop the plant invasion, state officials are considering tapping into more of state taxpayers' money to try to get it done sooner. To compensate, the deal could then shift more of the future Everglades restoration costs to the federal government.
"This is all about money," said James Moran, a South Florida Water Management District board member. "If the Everglades are going to be saved, these exotics have to be controlled or else the ecosystem will be forever changed and lost."
The 144,000-acre Loxahatchee National Wildlife Refuge, west of State Road 7, stretches from southern Palm Beach County to Wellington. It includes Everglades habitat that survived the draining that made the way for South Florida farming and development.
The refuge is also one of South Florida's three Everglades Water Conservation Areas, used to restock community drinking water supplies and to send more water south to Everglades National Park.
Now plants brought to Florida from a faraway continent are posing a serious risk to the refuge. Melaleuca trees and Old World Climbing Fern are both native to Australia, and have grown out of control after people planted them in Florida.
Melaleuca, which can grow 80 feet tall and has spongy white bark, in the early 1900's was planted as a way to dry up soggy South Florida. Now it turns marshes into densely wooded thickets that can be impenetrable to wading birds and other Everglades wildlife.
Old World Climbing Fern is thought to have come to the U.S. as an ornamental plant and now covers landscapes in Central and South Florida. Its fronds can grow 100 feet long, smothering trees and brush. In the refuge, Old World Climbing Fern is suffocating tree islands that are essential for animals to breed and feed in the Everglades.
With no natural enemies in South Florida, melaleuca and Old World Climbing Fern flourish in the Everglades.
Spraying herbicides, pulling the damaging plants out by hand and even releasing specially bred beetles, flies and other bugs are among the efforts to keep these and other exotic plants in check.
But in the Loxahatchee National Wildlife Refuge, these nonnative intruders are threatening to take over.
"These problems aren't going away," said Tabitha Cale, of Florida Audubon, which has called for more consistent government funding to curtail the spread of exotic plants.
Using tax money that Florida voters last year agreed to set aside for environmental efforts could be one way to pay for more help to control the damaging plants.
Amendment 1 calls for using 33 percent of Florida's existing real estate taxes to buy land for water conservation and to pay for other environmental uses. That equated to about $700 million in 2015.
The about $3.1 billion that the state and federal government have spent so far on Everglades restoration, with much more to come, helps pay for ongoing efforts to clean up South Florida water pollution and try to restore water flows to Everglades National Park.
Delaying the investment needed to combat melaleuca and Old World Climbing Fern in the wildlife refuge makes the eventual cost to deal with the problem more expensive, according to water management district Board Member Melanie Peterson.
"It's dying," Peterson said about the refuge and its tree islands. "Every day is just killing it more and more."

150920-a
Climate change a concern at debate
Daily Cardinal – Opinion by Sebastian Van Bastelaer
September 20, 2015
If a successful business gets flooded, and becomes completely submerged in water, does it make a profit?
During Wednesday’s Republican presidential debate, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio was asked whether or not he would be in favor of acting on climate change, as an insurance policy against its potential effects. The answer he gave, however, was an anachronism—a belief that belongs decades in the past, if it belongs anywhere at all.
Rubio decided to use the question as an opportunity to show his love for laissez-faire economics, bashing the government’s laws that purportedly repress businesses. He claimed that the current “left-wing government” has only put forth proposals “that would make it harder to do business in America.” This denunciation of environmental regulation, given in front of 10 other candidates and hundreds of well-educated people in the audience, was surprisingly met with applause.
While it’s true that tougher governmental regulation would cost businesses money, Rubio and his cohorts’ stubborn belief in the unimportance of climate change to the nation goes against a goal many of them brought up in the course of the debate: to leave the world a better place for their children.
Sure, maybe completely nixing governmental regulations on emissions and pollution will help the candidates’ children become rich (as if they would have had a hard time to begin with). However, it will be difficult for their children to enjoy their wealth when their cities and vacation homes become inhospitable because of rising tides and increasingly violent weather systems.
This argument against government regulation was a surprising statement, especially from a Floridian—recent climate models show that nearly 1 million homes on the coast of Florida would be underwater in the year 2100 if current conditions get worse.
What was also amazing was that not a single candidate—the field included graduates of Harvard, Yale, Duke and other great universities—challenged the belief that climate change doesn’t need to be addressed with government action. Can such well-educated people really believe that such a grave danger is negligible? Or are they so afraid of straying from party lines that they continue to deny the existence and importance of climate change?
Rubio also tried to downplay America’s role in contributing to climate change. He focused on the fact that China has surpassed the U.S. from a carbon emissions standpoint—we’re still second and lead the rest of the world by a large margin, and have the highest emissions per capita of any nation—and brought his argument to a logical conclusion by astutely pointing out that “America is not a planet.” This mindset of “this is a global issue, not an American issue” was what prevented us from adopting the Kyoto Protocol, which would have been a huge step in the right direction, and other major environmental reforms.
What many Republicans and other climate change deniers fail to understand is that it’s exactly this narrow-minded viewpoint that has greatly contributed to the increasingly pertinent—and decreasingly controversial in almost every nation except the U.S.—situation developing worldwide.
Politicians like to trumpet the U.S. as the greatest country in the world, and use our power to intervene in international affairs in order to suit our interests. If we are truly the greatest nation in the world, it’s our responsibility to mitigate—or at least stop being a huge contributor to—the effects of climate change.
The question posed to Rubio was a valid one: “Why not take out an insurance policy, in case the science is right?” There should be no “in case” in this question; the fact that there are still people who deny the science is a bad omen for the future of our planet. If politicians, who millions of people look to for guidance and wisdom, choose to continue to deny climate change, the world may very well be doomed.
If we all really care if our children lead better lives than we do, we need action, and that starts with our leaders. It’s time we start putting our money where our mouth is, instead of back into our own pockets. It may be the difficult thing to do, but it’s the right thing to do.

150920-b
In Florida, fears grow that environmental damage will hurt tourism
TravelWeekly - by Robert Silk
September 20, 2015
On a sunny afternoon in July, Miami Beach Mayor Philip Levine, joined by mayors of four nearby coastal towns, gathered on the sand before assembled media to make a plea to county and state officials: Spend more money restoring eroded beaches, Levine said, standing on the narrowest stretch of Miami Beach to emphasize his point.
“By not protecting the sand beaches, you’re ignoring your most important economic generator at your own peril,” Levine said, according to the Miami Herald, which covered the event.
Indeed, in Miami and around Florida, tourism is booming, in large part due to the state’s famed beaches and its other outdoor attractions. In 2014, the state hosted an estimated 98 million visitors, who contributed $82 billion to the economy, according to Visit Florida. This year, that figure is expected to leap past 100 million for the first time.
But though Florida’s 825 miles of beaches continue to offer unquestioned beauty, many aren’t as healthy as they might appear to the untrained eye. In fact, the Florida Department of Environmental Protection (FDEP), which annually spends between $25 million and $40 million on beach restoration and nourishment, estimates that the state now has 407 miles of critically eroded beaches, nearly double the damage that existed when the agency first did such an audit in 1989.
Critically eroded beaches, by definition, have receded or eroded enough to threaten recreational interests, development or wildlife. And while erosion is a natural process, it is often accelerated by human activities, such as development on protective sand dunes, offshore channel dredging and the installation of seawalls.
While beaches are Florida’s most popular attraction, they’re by no means the state’s only outdoor draw, nor are they alone in facing substantial environmental challenges as Florida’s population edges toward 20 million and the visitor count crashes across the nine-figure threshold.
The Everglades, possibly the world’s most famous wetland, has been so affected by water diversion and development that it is now just half of what it was at the dawn of the 19th century.
Meanwhile, Everglades National Park, the 1.5-million-acre preserve that sits at the southern end of that Everglades ecosystem, has become so overrun by invasive Burmese pythons during the past 15 years that in some areas 99% of midsize mammals, such as opossum and raccoons, have been lost to predation.
The Everglades provides the drinking water for southern Florida and also serves as the watershed to coastal estuaries, including Biscayne Bay and the Ten Thousand Islands. Fixing the wetland’s environmental problems is regarded as so crucial that the ecosystem is the subject of a $13 billion joint state and federal restoration, the costliest environmental project in history.
Environmental problems have also reached beyond Florida’s coastline to its reefs. The third largest barrier reef system in the world, behind only the systems that lie off the eastern coasts of Australia and Central America, the reefs are an especially important economic driver in the Florida Keys, where 26% of annual visitors either dive or snorkel, according to a 2010 study sponsored by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
However, fueled by everything from higher water temperatures to polluted urban and agricultural run-off and the direct impact of visitation, living coral cover along the South Florida reef tract has declined by nearly 50% since rigorous monitoring began in 1995.
Pollution, water diversion and crowding have also taken their toll on Florida’s diverse saltwater fisheries, which, according to state records, accounted for 1.6 million recreational license sales during the 2014 fiscal year.
Several species are on the rebound after tougher federal fisheries rules implemented in 2007 led to stricter management. But that stricter management, at both the federal and state levels, has meant tighter recreational catch regulations on everything from Atlantic Ocean and Gulf of Mexico fish such as red grouper and greater amberjack (new rules were implemented this year) to snook, a popular species that roams shallow water mud flats and mangrove shorelines.
Meanwhile, 2016 will see the onset of a new fishing closure zone in Biscayne National Park, just south of Miami, where snapper and grouper have not only declined in abundance but also rarely live long enough to even reach legal catch size, according to the National Park Service.
No drop in the fun factor
Despite Florida’s myriad environmental problems, few would argue that its sun, beaches, waters and wilds fail to offer enough to please most visitors.
“I don’t worry that we’re going to overstress our eco-assets,” said Visit Tampa Director Santiago Corrado, whose county saw a 6.2% year-over-year increase in visitors in 2014. Meetings and cultural attractions are a major draw in Tampa, but the area also offers paddling and fishing on Tampa Bay and the Hillsborough River, and it benefits from the appeal of the beaches in the adjacent St. Petersburg/Clearwater area.
Even people who have closely witnessed Florida’s ecological decline say that the state has a great deal to offer.
“There is still so much to see,” said Everglades guide Garl Harrold, who lamented the loss of small mammals over the last 15 years to the Burmese python invasion. “You’ve got plenty of alligators, the crocodiles are doing better than they were before, and we’ve got real good birds still.”
Mark Sosin, who has fished Florida waters since the 1950s and had a fishing show, “Mark Sosin’s Saltwater Journal,” on ESPN for 12 years, is quick to assert that the fishing was much better decades ago, when far fewer people were on the water. But he also says that he’d still recommend Miami, with its combination of reef, deep water and flats fishing as well as its fine hotels and plentiful dining and entertainment, over any angling destination in the world.
Nevertheless, it’s not just mayors in the Miami vicinity who are concerned about Florida’s environmental problems potentially damaging tourism.
In the Florida Keys, for example, the local tourism council is planning to partner in the coming two years with NOAA on a study that will look at the impact that NOAA’s Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary, which surrounds the island chain, has on visitation. Tourist Development Council Director Harold Wheeler said the study will also delve into what needs to be done to protect sanctuary resources such as reefs and fisheries.
Wheeler said he was definitely mindful of the need to strike a balance between visitation and the Keys’ outdoor resources.
 “Some of that starts with how we brand ourselves and how we target the tourists we are looking for,” he said, adding that his agency also uses its Fla-keys.com website to promote outdoor voluntourism and to educate people about how to tread lightly on the reefs.
Concerns about beach quality
What the reefs are to Florida Keys tourism, beaches are to tourism throughout most of the rest of coastal Florida. According to Visit Florida data, 43% of domestic tourists in 2013 participated in a beach or waterfront activity, more than double the percentage of people who visited one of the state’s famed theme parks.
In fact, domestic visitors comprise 84% of Florida’s overall tourist market, and more of them spent time along the water than went out to a restaurant or visited relatives or friends.
Maintaining the beaches, though, is no simple matter, especially when one of the goals is to compete with other regional destinations, where the beaches might be wider and the sand might be whiter.
In July, for example, Miami-Dade County Mayor Carlos Gimenez, having heard the message sent by his fellow Florida mayors a few weeks earlier, pitched a $40 million beach erosion plan by noting the importance of competing with the rapidly opening Cuba beach market.
“We have to make sure that our beaches are as beautiful and as large and as inviting to our tourists as they can possibly be,” he said in an interview with the Associated Press. 
This year, the FDEP will undertake 13 beach restoration or nourishment projects spanning from the Fort Lauderdale area in southeast Florida to Pensacola in the state’s Panhandle.
On Lido Key, just west of Sarasota, the local, state and federal governments partnered on a $3.6 million restoration to repair damage caused by Tropical Storm Debby in 2012. In St. Lucie County, on the central east coast, work crews constructed a two-acre limestone jetty to reduce the beach erosion caused by waves.
Drawing tourists is a goal of restoration projects, as is creating a buffer against potential storm surges. Since 1998, the FDEP has restored and subsequently maintained 227 miles of the state’s most eroded beaches.
Robert Brantly, an FDEP engineer who has worked for nearly three decades on the state’s beach program, said the restoration projects work.
“A visitor now in Florida, going to a restored beach, I don’t even think they would know the beach has been restored,” he said.
But not everyone is so bullish about beach restoration as a catch-all solution for either tourism or the environment.
“There’s a lot of examples of beach projects that have gone terribly awry,” said Holly Parker, Florida’s regional coordinator for the Surfrider Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to the enhancement of beaches worldwide.
She pointed to a 2013 Delray Beach nourishment project in which a barge transporting the dredge that was to be used to mine offshore sand for the beach dragged the bottom, damaging a three-mile stretch of a local reef.
In a case this spring, Palm Beach residents claimed that the contractor for a $17.6 million nourishment project was short-changing the city by using low-quality sand. Indeed, fears about sand quality are often a sticking point in Florida’s beach restoration projects.
“We are very, very conscious of the materials we use,” Brantly said of projects that the FDEP co-sponsors.
But such assurances have not assuaged opponents of a planned $52 million nourishment project on an 19-mile stretch of the Panhandle’s Walton County that could commence as soon as October 2016.
To be funded jointly by Walton County, along with the state and the federal governments, the project calls for the mining of 3.9 million cubic yards of sand from four miles offshore in the Gulf of Mexico. It will add 50 to 100 feet of width to the beach as well as fortify the sand dunes immediately beyond the beach.
Visit South Walton Executive Director Jim Bagby said the location of the mining was chosen because the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has said it contains the whitest sand in the vicinity.
Still, opponents say the sand won’t be white enough.
A statement on the website for an organization of beachfront property owners who have fought the project, said: “The beaches in Walton County are among the best in the world and known for their sugar-white sand. The inferior sand that this project wants to pump onto our coastline comes from a source never before used for nourishment projects.”
To settle the matter, Walton County is considering conducting a new core sampling of 20 spots within the area selected for the sand mining in order to reconfirm the sand’s quality.
But while the debate on the central Panhandle coast centers on sand quality, the debate in Miami also focuses on quantity.
The Southeast Regional Climate Compact, a confederation of the four counties that stretch from the Keys north to the Palm Beach area, projects that sea levels in the area will rise nine to 24 inches by 2060. In low-lying Florida, such increases would jeopardize the Everglades, fresh water supplies, highways, farmlands and, yes, beaches.
For beach lovers, there was good news to be found in an offshore sand inventory published jointly by the state and federal governments in 2013.
Even accounting for sea level rise, the study found, there is enough offshore sand to meet the overall needs of the six counties along the Atlantic coastline between the Keys and St. Lucie County for the next 50 years. However, the study also showed that individually, the Miami and Fort Lauderdale areas are already out of acceptable offshore sand deposits.
For a place like Miami Beach, that means that efforts to compete with Cuba and the rest of the Caribbean for beach tourists will require getting sand from up the coast, from inland deposits or from another country, most likely the Bahamas. Any of those choices will drive up costs, said Florida International University coastal scientist Stephen Leatherman, who is widely known as “Dr. Beach” due to his annual ranking of the top 10 beaches in the U.S.
And if Miami were to purchase sand from the Bahamas, it would also lose the option of using federal grant money.
Meanwhile, the specter of sand being mined in federal waters off the St. Lucie County coast for use in Miami has already sparked outcries from the area’s county officials and state legislatures.
Leatherman said that as resources dwindle, he sees an era of beach sand wars on the horizon.
“It’s getting more controversial and more expensive,” he said of beach restoration and nourishment. “It’s controversial because of the quality of sand not being the same level as it has been in the past. Tourists might not think it is that much of a problem, but the people who have been coming there a lot, they are going to want to see that same sand, and I understand that.”

150920-c
Scott’s shady water management shuffle
Ocala.com (Star-Banner) - by Emilio “Sonny” Vergara, former executive director of the St. John River Water Management District and the Southwest Florida Water Management District
September 20, 2015
Gov. Rick Scott is creating a chaotic resource management nightmare for this state, with no end in sight.
Several months back, Jon Steverson, then the Scott-chosen executive director of the Northwest Florida Water Management District, was removed and made the Scott-appointed Secretary of the Florida Department of Environmental Protection. The resultant empty seat there was just filled by a fellow named Brett Cyphers, the Scott-chosen assistant executive director to Steverson at NWFWMD since 2012.
Recently, the Scott-chosen St. Johns River Water Management District executive director, Hans Tanzler, resigned in a huff and was replaced by the earlier Scott-chosen executive director of the Suwannee River Water Management District, Ann Shortelle.
Just last week, the former Scott-chosen director of Southwest Florida Water Management District, Blake Guillory, who was later chosen by Scott to take over the South Florida Water Management District because Scott had fired the then-existing Scott-chosen SFWMD executive director, Melissa Meeker, has now been fired because he supported a small but critically needed rise in taxes and was replaced by the governor’s former legal Counsel, Peter Antonacci.
You’ll remember he was the lawyer who told the former FDLE chief behind closed doors that all the Cabinet members had secretly agreed he was to be fired, which resulted in a Sunshine Law violation by the governor, Adam Putnam and Pam Bondi, and which was settled without attributing guilt recently for a pile of public tax dollars.
Antonacci’s resource management experience would measure at less than zero, were that even possible.
Now if you were a voting member of such a large state as this, and your CEO was making such, frankly, dumb decisions like putting his incompetent friends and political supporters in and out of management positions of agencies critically important to the safety and welfare of millions of Florida residents and a globally unique natural environment with such chaotic frequency that it was resulting in the obvious decay of the ability of those agencies to do their jobs, wouldn’t you assume he was so incompetent that getting rid of him would be central to the survival of the state ?
Do you think Scott knows and, if so, does he care what he’s doing to Florida? The frightening thing for me is this. I believe he does know what he’s doing to this state and he truly doesn’t care. This was his game plan from the beginning. And he’s not through.

150919-
Gone from the 'glades:  Federal rules to put Florida's legendary airboats in dry dock
FoxNews - by Phil Keating
September 19, 2015
Amid the sweeping sawgrass of Everglades National Park are sights and sounds that draw a million visitors every year: alligators and airboats.
Florida’s Native Americans paddled dugout canoes through the shallow waters of the “river of grass” past the gators, snakes, blue herons and egrets. In the last century, Florida’s "gladesmen" invented the airboat, making traversing the swamps far more efficient. South of the Tamiami Trail, gladesmen would hydroplane the propeller-powered airboats through the mangroves and sawgrass, hunting alligator and frogs or just enjoying the natural beauty of the swamp.
After Everglades National Park was established in 1934, hunting was banned along with motorized vehicles, except in one small sliver of the park known as the Eastern Extension. Even though it became part of the 1.5 million-acre park in 1989, air boating has continued. But that 1989 act of Congress also mandated the U.S. Park Service come up with a comprehensive management plan which included the government buying up 9,000 parcels of land and holding nearly 50 public meetings over the years. Now, that plan is ready to be implemented, and that means the end of private air boating in Everglades National Park.
“It’s heartbreaking for me," said Keith Price, president of the Airboat Association of Florida. "I’ve spent my lifetime sharing the everglades.”
Fortunately for Price, the phasing out of the airboats will grandfather in those who can prove they were at least 16 years old and active air boaters as of 1989. Those gladesmen -- and it is still unclear how many qualify -- will still be able to do what they’ve always done. For everyone else, they only have a few months left.
“They’re robbing our children and grandchildren of the culture and the heritage that is going on here,” lamented Price.
Into the sunset ? The legendary airboats of Florida's 'gladesmen' will soon be banned from the Everglades.
The Park Service says don’t blame Florida’s premier national park, the largest east of the Rockies, blame Washington. 
Aside from the grandfathered gladesmen, the only air boating that will continue to be allowed in the eastern section of the Park will be four commercial air boat tour operators. They’ll no longer be independent, but will instead work as contractors for the park. Park officials will regulate their concessions and the number of runs they do.
Gladesmen say they are part of the state's unique culture.
At Coopertown Air Boat Tours—the oldest in the business, operating since 1945—73-year-old Jesse Kennon is lukewarm on the whole thing.
“You’re taking away something I’ve done for 60 years and now saying, ‘Okay, you’re going to do what I want you to do,'" he said. "I don’t mind working with the park, but I don’t like to work FOR the park.
"There’s a difference.”
The official phase out of the private airboats goes into effect next year. The gladesmen fear this is a step towards the eventual demise of what’s left of what they consider a critical piece of Florida's culture. 
Unless a future Congress reverses the rules, the gladesmen can either airboat elsewhere, on state lands or those controlled by the Bureau of Land Management. Or, they can become what several defiantly have predicted: Everglades airboat outlaws, speeding through the Everglades, always on the lookout for Park Rangers on their own airboats.

150917-
Scott usurps local control over South Florida water agency
MyAJC.com - Editorial
September 17, 2015
With the abrupt departure of the South Florida Water Management District’s executive director and the sheepish backpedaling of the agency’s Board of Governors, there no longer can be any disputing that Gov. Rick Scott has assumed total control over the water district.
Does it matter that local sovereignty on water issues is lost, controlled from Tallahassee, or that the agency will be run, as of Oct. 1, by a former Scott staffer, an attorney and lobbyist fresh from one of the biggest scandals of Scott’s tenure ?
Short list of Florida Public Service Commission candidates released
Put it another way:  Does flood protection in your neighborhood matter ? Does Everglades restoration matter ?
Do such endangered species as the Everglades snail kite and the Cape Sable seaside sparrow matter ? Does the health of the St. Lucie and Caloosahatchee river estuaries and Florida Bay matter ?
Does the safety of residents of Belle Glade, South Bay and other lake communities matter ?
We believe they do.
This coup d’etat from Tallahassee came immediately after the local governing board members dared to make an independent decision, one they believed was in the best interests of the millions of people who depend on the agency. Their sin was to vote 6-2 to maintain the district’s tax rate, rather than lower it in conjunction with increasing property tax values. On orders from Tallahassee, the board has since undone that vote and gone with the governor’s preferred tax cut.
But the board’s reversal apparently wasn’t enough for Scott. On Sept. 10, district Executive Director Blake Guillory resigned, and the board unanimously agreed to appoint a permanent successor. No search whatsoever was conducted. The new executive director is Scott’s former general counsel Pete Antonacci.
Yes. That Pete Antonacci.
He’s the one who, in December, capped off extensive public service by engineering the questionable, and shameful exit of the highly respected head of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement — even though the Cabinet hadn’t yet taken a public vote.
The FDLE secretary, Gerald Bailey, was apparently persona non grata for refusing to allow his office to be politicized during Scott’s 2014 re-election campaign.
Soon after that chapter, Antonacci left government service to rejoin his law firm and lobbying agency, GrayRobinson. He became a lobbyist for several clients, including charter school and education companies, prison health contractor Corizon, and an insurance firm, Meadowbrook.
Meanwhile, Sunshine State News’ Nancy Smith noted that Antonacci’s “significant other” is Anne Longman, whose firm, Lewis, Longman & Walker PA, does legal work for the water management district and represented the Seminole Tribe of Florida.
So Antonacci is doing the governor another huge favor. One can only guess how he’ll be rewarded.
What will Antonacci’s order of business be ? Let’s just say it doesn’t look good for the endangered snail kite.
The water district is preparing to sue the federal government over a decision based on the Endangered Species Act. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is insisting the agency protect nesting snail kites if it wants permits for four massive pumps that can siphon Lake Okeechobee during times of severe drought. The pumps allow sugar farmers and citrus growers to keep irrigating during dry spells. But their use can lead marshes at the edge of the lake to die.
Those marshes are the kites’ prime nesting habitat. When marshes dry, predators like snakes and raccoons eat the kites’ eggs, and the kites’ food, apple snails, disappears.
The water district is outraged that the federal government is violating local sovereignty. We know just how it feels.

150916-a
Antonacci's coronation at water management district is an abomination
TCPalm.com – by Paula Dockery, a syndicated columnist who served in the Florida Legislature for 16 years as a Republican from Lakeland
September 16, 2015
One of the perks of being governor is appointing thousands of individuals to various boards, commissions, authorities and committees. While most of these are unpaid positions, they do carry prestige and the ability to shape policy.
Some of these boards are extremely influential. For example, the appointees to the five water management district boards actually select their executive directors. This is done to ensure the executive director’s loyalty is to the board and the taxpayers of the district, not to the governor and other elected officials in Tallahassee.
One caveat: The governor can indirectly choose the executive director if his board appointees are little more than rubber stamps. That was unfortunately the case recently with the Board of Governors of the South Florida Water Management District.
Serving on the board of one of the water management districts comes with important responsibilities. Board members deal with complex water policy and restoration efforts. They determine water usage. They are entrusted with land management and resource protection.
So it’s disturbing the governor has slashed their funding, downsized their staffs, all but eradicated Florida Forever spending and forced out some of the most knowledgeable employees.
Many who once trusted the water management districts to carry out major restoration projects now fear their professionalism, science-based decision-making and political independence has been compromised. Under this governor, their resources and staff have been decimated while they are expected to speed up permitting — particularly for agricultural landowners who are converting their lands to development.
The state is split into five water management districts — Northwest Florida, Suwanee, St. Johns River, Southwest Florida and the granddaddy of them all, the South Florida Water Management District.
Covering 16 counties from Orlando to the Florida Keys and serving a population of 8.1 million residents, the district is responsible for a safe and adequate water supply, permitting for agricultural uses, flood control, land acquisition and management and Everglades restoration. The district has a budget of some $750 million. Board members need to be good watchdogs over public funds — spending not only tax revenue levied through their ad valorem taxing authority, but also spending tens of millions of dollars through other state revenue sources and programs such as Florida Forever.
The majority of the nine current appointments to the South Florida Water Management District are attorneys, Realtors/developers and people with agriculture interests. Until recently, U.S. Sugar, a politically powerful corporation that has been the beneficiary of millions of Florida tax dollars, was represented on the board.
These Board of Governor appointees this month pushed out Executive Director Blake Guillory, an engineer with a 24-year career in water management and replaced him with Peter Antonacci, an attorney-turned-lobbyist who served a stint in the Scott administration.
Does that name sound familiar ? It should.
As Scott’s general counsel, Antonacci secretly visited Gerald Bailey, the well-respected commissioner of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement and suggested he resign, intimating that the governor and other Cabinet officials supported his recommendation. This set off a scandal for a variety of reasons. First, the FDLE commissioner is a Cabinet appointee, not the governor’s appointee. It would take a public meeting and public vote to replace him before the full Cabinet. Second, all three of the Cabinet officials, other than the governor, denied any knowledge of Bailey’s ouster. Third, it was a blatant violation of our state Sunshine Laws.
Now, in a similar situation, Guillory was forced out and Antonacci was installed. The position was never advertised and qualified candidates were never sought.
Antonacci, general counsel to the governor, left the Governor’s Office to parlay his political relationships into lucrative lobbying opportunities.
But duty calls.
Scott, displeased that the Board and Guillory did not follow his directive to further lower property taxes to the detriment of the district’s needs, wanted a change. So, Antonacci, who proved his loyalty to the governor and his willingness to do the governor’s dirty work — forcing people out and providing plausible deniability — is being placed in another rewarding position.
It seems loyalty to the governor trumps having any real job qualifications. Antonacci’s appointment requires Senate confirmation.
The Senate should vote down his appointment and send a strong message that taking care of the state’s water needs comes before political patronage.
Related:           Antonacci wrong person for water management district        Miami Herald
Taking care of state's water needs should come before political patronage   TBO.com
Is the water district's new leader a hired gun for Gov. Rick Scott?   Palm Beach Post (blog)

150916-b
Cut out sugar price supports
DailyCommercial.com
September 16, 2015
After decades of boosting food prices for American consumers, undermining foreign aid programs and polluting the Everglades, the s ugar industry appears to be gumming up a brand-new project.
The U.S. government’s sugar-support program — which has made the price of domestic sugar almost double that of the world price — is said to be a sticking point in negotiations over the Trans-Pacific Partnership.
The proposed trade deal, potentially affecting 40 percent of the global economy, is stalled in part by “the calls of Australia and other nations for the U.S. to loosen a quota system that protects domestic suppliers while making the product more expensive for consumers,” according to Bloomberg News.
It’s just one more reason to end the support system that began during the Great Depression and is kept alive by the sugar lobby’s constant contributions to powerful politicians.
The federal program limits domestic production of cane and beet sugar, restricts foreign imports, places a floor under growers’ prices and requires the government to buy crop surpluses — those that the industry can’t sell for a profit — which the government then sells at a loss to the ethanol industry.
The program protects the incomes of sugar producers at the expense of consumers and the environment.
The higher domestic price raises the cost of any food containing sugar — from bread to cereal to ketchup — at an overall cost to consumers of an estimated $3.7 billion a year. It also costs thousands of jobs as food manufacturers move jobs to countries where they can pay the lower world price for sugar.
And the price difference is significant. A global production surplus of sugar has driven the world price to its lowest level since 2008, the Bloomberg article noted. A pound of domestic sugar costs almost 2 1/2 times the global price.
The price supports, meanwhile, spell environmental disaster for Florida. The higher price encourages overproduction of South Florida sugar fields, and pesticide-and-fertilizer runoff contributes greatly to the pollution of the Everglades. The pollution and other impacts from sugar cane farming, in large part, necessitated a multibillion-dollar state and federal restoration program.
Sugar represents less than 2 percent of the value of all U.S. crop production, but the industry contributes more to congressional campaigns than any other crop producer. From 2007 to 2014, sugar producers donated $18.5 million, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.
That level of largess persuades key members of Congress in both parties to ignore calls from reform.
Now trading partners involved in the Trans-Pacific Partnership talks have joined those calls. The TPP will affect dozens of countries and, proponents say, make it easier for U.S. companies to sell goods around the world. The deal is a top goal of the Obama administration and is backed by Republican leaders in Congress.
Will this tip the scales toward global trade and American consumers

150916-c
Gramps hosts eEighth-Annual Everglades Awareness Benefit
Miami New Times - by Junette Reyes
September 16, 2015
For some, the Everglades is simply a vast mass of land one has to get through on long, tiring road trips. Sure, you may see the occasional alligator or two, but from behind a car window, our massive swamp can lose some of its magic.
But in reality, it’s a habitat for more than 20 types of animals on the threatened or endangered species list and one of our state's most precious natural treasures. What people typically fail to realize is that the Everglades also act as a source of water for more than 7 million Americans. Ironically — yet not so unexpectedly — humans are responsible for detrimentally altering the very ecosystem they have come to rely on.
Now, the Love the Everglades Movement is depending on South Florida music fans to help out. Its mission is one of restoration, including the removal of invasive species as well as ensuring the protection of the Everglades’ waters.
Their weapons of choice: song, spoken word, dance, and art.
Together with Ploppy Palace Productions, a benefit concert meant to raise Everglades awareness is being put on for the eighth year. The benefit concert started as an annual environmental gathering at Miami's Wallflower Gallery until the space closed in 2010. Four years later, in 2014, Ploppy Palace Productions teamed up with the Love the Everglades Movement to reinstate the event.
“Our goals merge artistic entertainment with educational empowerment, so we can strengthen our community with the vibrancy of art and the vitality of water,” says the event’s musical director, who simply goes by Flash.
“This is not a passive show. We want the audience to connect with the different organizations and speakers as we work to build up a coalition of active supporters. We want people to be motivated — to spread the knowledge and resources from this event to their friends and families.”
Flash emphasizes that though they might not have all of the answers necessary for the restoration, events such as this benefit help build a strong network of supporters to expand not only their outreach but also their knowledge on how to tackle the issues the Everglades are facing.
“South Florida is at a precipice of environmental disaster, and if we don’t address the roots of overdevelopment, energy policy, and water management, we will lose the quality of water and the diversity of wildlife in the Everglades,” Flash says.
“If we continue to build without consideration for the world around us, we threaten the fabric [of] life and face unknown consequences.”
The eighth-annual Everglades Awareness Benefit Concert with Suenalo, the Spam Allstars, Army Gideon, Sunghosts, and more. 4 p.m. to 3 a.m. Saturday, September 19, at Gramps, 176 NW 24th St., Miami; 305-699-2669; gramps.com. Admission is $10. All Ages. 

150915-a
Area cities oppose Everglades drilling proposal
Marcellus.com – by Arun Sivasankaran, Sun Sentinel
September 15, 2015
Many cities in Broward County have passed resolutions opposing plans by a Miami-based company to conduct exploratory oil drilling in the Everglades. The company’s plans include digging up to two miles to explore the chances of extracting oil.
Miramar, which is the city that will be the most affected if the drilling took place, acted first and exhorted the Florida Department of Environmental Protection to deny the company permission to drill. Over the last few weeks, other cities in the region have followed suit. The County Commission, too, has officially recorded its opposition and will seek an amendment of state law to ensure that the project does not go through.
Cities such as Coconut Creek, Pembroke Pines, Sunrise, Tamarac, Coral Springs, Parkland, Lauderhill, Hallandale Beach, Plantation, Weston and Wilton Manors have all passed resolutions against the move by Miami-based Kantor Real Estate LLC, a company that owns about 20,000 acres of land in the Everglades. The cities, as well as environmental groups, are concernednot only about the potential environmental effects of the drilling but also the negative effects the project would have on the quality of drinking water in the region.
The company is on record that the project will not adversely affect the environment, but cities are not willing to take a chance. “It is more than animals; it is more than plants,” said Tamarac Mayor Harry Dressler. “We don’t like the idea of our water supply being threatened by anyone, whether it is external to us or not.”
Matthew Schwartz, South Florida Wildlands Association executive director, was at a recent Tamarac City Commission workshop to speak on the issue. “This is a bad idea,” he said. “There is not a good way to make oil drilling in the Everglades eco-friendly.”
“Oil is a big investment for a lot of people,” Schwartz said. “The tax benefits are tremendous. If you hit, you make a lot of money. If you don’t hit, you get the tax write-off.”
In May 2013, A company had applied to drill for oil in Collier County, just 1,000 feet away from the Golden Gates community in East Naples, Schwartz said. “Nobody knew that there was even private land, let alone drilling rights, in the water conservation area when Kantor made the application…You can have a public landowner owning the surface rights and a private landowner owning the mineral rights. That is what happened here.”
A company that wants to drill in the Everglades has to get the permission of cities that are adjacent to it before it can start drilling, said Coral Springs Mayor Skip Campbell. “Drilling and fracking in the Biscayne aquifer are pretty significant environmental issues,” he said. “Both of those are very significant to our city, our property and our citizens.”

150915-b
Federal bureaucracy is the monster killing the Florida Everglades
FlaglerLive - by Nancy Smith, Editor of the Sunshine State News
September 15, 2015
Federal bureaucracy trumps science, it trumps common sense, it trumps public sentiment. Federal bureaucracy is the monster killing the Florida Everglades. I’ve been saying that for years. Last week in Fort Lauderdale at a Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation (FWC) meeting, the woeful state of the world’s largest wetlands at the hands of the feds was made about as public and as plain as it’s going to get.
With prolonged higher rainfall, as South Florida is receiving right now, comes too much freshwater in the Everglades. North of the Tamiami Trail, animals fight for their life in deep water. But thanks to federal regulations, water isn’t allowed to flow south into Everglades National Park, where it could save a freshwater-dependent ecosystem dying of thirst.
The feds say no in all kinds of ways.
One part too wet, the other part too dry, federal bureacracy too arrogant.
That’s what the conversation was all about at the FWC meeting. The commission’s South Regional Director Ernie Marks, who has worked closely on Everglades issues with FWC Commissioner “Alligator” Ron Bergeron, presented a disturbing look at Everglades water levels and the many components of restoration in the big swamp.
When high water persists, as it did in 2013, it kills fur-bearing animals in the Everglades and impacts wading birds and tree islands for the worse. Marks reminded participants of another time of sky-high water levels — 1994-95, when deep water caused the death of 159 white-tailed deer.
Bergeron said a short period of high water in the Everglades isn’t going to do a lot of damage. But federal agencies should damn the regulations and let water flow south into the park when water levels don’t drop on their own.
“An analysis of water levels in the ‘Glades since 1943 shows that having no more than 2 feet of water is ideal.” But, he said, when water gets to 3 feet, wading birds have no place to stand.
Panthers used to prowl the water conservation areas, he said. But after the high water of 1994-95 decimated their food sources, they moved to the Big Cypress National Preserve.
“For us to manage the wildlife, you have to have healthy habitat,” Bergeron said. “We have to decide if we’re going to have Everglades restoration or an Everglades reservoir.”
Federal bureacracy at work: Federal agencies involved with Everglades restoration, including the Department of Justice, the Department of the Interior and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, don’t care if the water conservation areas drown and the park becomes parched because, they say, phosphorus levels are not yet low enough in the water that would be sent into the park.
The levels get lower every year. But they’re not low enough for the feds.
Like Bergeron and other commissioners, Capt. Rick Murphy of the “Chevy Florida Insider Fishing Report” suggested that sending the water south with a little more phosphorus than desired would do much less damage than depriving Everglades National Park and its wildlife and too-saline Florida Bay and its fish of fresh water.
Federal bureaucrats are hastening the demise of the Florida Everglades.
I trust Ron Bergeron. He lives the tragedy most Floridians never see. If he tells us that at critical rainy periods, state agencies ought to be able to save animal lives, feed the national park and help Florida Bay — believe him.

150914-a
Global warming to pick up in 2015, 2016
TheStar.com
September 14, 2015
LONDON: Man-made global warming is set to produce exceptionally high average temperatures this year and next, boosted by natural weather phenomena such as El Nino, Britain’s top climate and weather body said in a report Monday.
“It looks very likely that globally 2014, 2015 and 2016 will all be amongst the very warmest years ever recorded,” Rowan Sutton of the National Centre for Atmospheric Science, which contributed to the report, told journalists.
“This is not a fluke,” he said. “We are seeing the effects of energy steadily accumulating in the Earth’s oceans and atmosphere, caused by greenhouse gas emissions.”
The rate at which global temperatures are increasing is also on track to pick up in the coming years, ending a period of more than a decade in which the pace of warming worldwide had appeared to slow down, the report said.
This “pause” has been seized upon by sceptics as evidence that climate change was driven more by natural cycles than human activity.
Some scientists, however, argue that there was no significant slowdown, pointing instead to flawed calculations.
The 20-page report from Britain’s Met Office, entitled “Big changes underway in the climate system ?”, highlights current transitions in major weather patterns that affect rainfall and temperatures at a regional level.
An El Nino weather pattern centred in the tropical Pacific Ocean is “well underway”, the report says, and shaping up to be one of the most intense on record. Very strong El Ninos also occurred over the winters of 1997 and 1982.
Set to grow stronger in the coming months, the current El Nino -- a result of shifting winds and ocean circulation -- is likely to result is dry conditions in parts of Asia and Australia, as well as southern and sub-Saharan North Africa, the Met Office said.
By contrast, the southwestern United States -- including parched California, suffering from an historic drought -- has a strong chance of seeing higher-than-average rainfall.   El Ninos also affect tropical storms, making them less likely in the North Atlantic and more intense in the West Pacific, where they are known as typhoons.
Overall, an El Nino is also likely to add a little heat to the general impact of global warming.
Meanwhile, warming sea surface temperatures along the North American west coast point to a reversal of another natural pattern called the Pacific Decadal Oscillation.
This, too, could temporarily nudge regional temperatures higher, but has yet to be confirmed, the report said.
Finally, the interplay of ocean currents and atmosphere in the Atlantic -- another multi-decade oscillation -- is moving the other way, and will have a cooling effect.
“The current warm phase is now 20 years long and historical precedent suggests a return to relatively cool conditions could occur within a few years,” the report says.
By itself, that would mean cooler and drying summers in northern Europe, and increased rainfall in the northeastern United States.
While all of these cyclical forces affect weather and temperatures trends, global warming is the main driver of change today, the report concluded.
“We know that natural patterns contribute to global temperature in any given year, but very warm temperatures so far this year indicate the continued impact of increasing greenhouse gases,” said Stephen Belcher, director of the Met Office Hadley Centre. -AFP

150914-b







C-44 project location
(CLICK)

150914-b
Good news for St. Lucie River estuary: $197 million contract awarded for C-44 reservoir
SunshineStateNews - Submitted by Nancy Smith
September 14, 2015
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Jacksonville District awarded a $197 million construction contract Friday for a reservoir that will clean water bound for the St. Lucie River and Indian River Lagoon.
The reservoir component of the Indian River Lagoon-South’s C-44 Reservoir and Stormwater Treatment Area (STA) project is in Martin County -- one of the counties devastated in 2013 by Lake Okeechobee water releases. During periods of prolonged rainfall, millions of gallons of fresh water infuse brackish waterways, releasing dangerous toxins and carrying them into local rivers. 
Though the massive project won't be completed overnight -- it will take five years to build and another two more years to test -- the end product will function eactly as beleaguered citizens of Martin County have spent nearly 15 years pushing for. 
The $197 million construction contract was awarded to Barnard Construction Co. Inc. of Bozeman, Mont. According to a Corps news release, the contract involves construction of a 3,400-acre reservoir that will store up to 15 feet of water and provide 50,600 acre-feet (16 trillion gallons) of storage capacity. Construction is anticipated to begin this winter.  
“The reservoir is the largest component of the C-44 project and a key storage component of the entire Indian River Lagoon-South project,” said Orlando Ramos-Gines, Jacksonville District senior project manager.  “Getting this contract awarded is a major step forward toward being able to store local basin run-off and improve conditions in the St. Lucie Estuary and Indian River Lagoon.”
The contract also includes the construction of the these features:
●   The 35,000-foot-long Western Reservoir Perimeter Canal, which runs parallel to most of the northern, western, and southern embankments of the reservoir. It will be used to transmit surface runoff and seepage flow from the embankment internal drain and the trench drain systems. 
●   A corresponding 50-foot-wide spillway for the Western Reservoir Perimeter Canal that will discharge into the intake canal, which was completed as part of the Corps’ first construction contract for the project, in July 2014.
●   The 15,000-foot long Eastern Reservoir Perimeter canal, which runs parallel to the eastern embankment of the reservoir. It will convey runoff and seepage from the embankment internal drain and the trench drain system. 
●   A reservoir discharge tower structure comprised of three slide gates to convey a maximum of 1,100 cubic feet per second (cfs) (600 cfs under normal operations) through two culverts to the system discharge canal. 
●   Two miles of the system’s discharge canal that will convey flows from the reservoir through the Distribution Canal to the Eastern Stormwater Treatment Area (STA) Collection Canal. 
●   The installation of several box culverts in various locations around project footprint to provide vehicular access across canals. Additionally, the reservoir embankment includes the construction of several boat ramps for access inside the reservoir. 
“The reservoir contract will complement the construction already initiated by the state on the reservoir intake canal and associated Stormwater Treatment Area,” said Ramos-Gines.  “Collectively, these features will work together to provide additional storage and treatment, while attenuating damaging flows discharged to the St. Lucie Estuary.”
In an effort to construct the project as expeditiously as possible, the South Florida Water Management District (SFWMD) has awarded construction contracts for the discharge canal, pump station and STA. The shared efforts on construction contracts will reduce the time needed to fully-construct the project by at least two years.
Construction of the C-44 Reservoir and STA is scheduled to be completed in 2020. Upon construction completion, up to two years of operational testing will occur.  
Once all work is complete, the project will capture local run-off from the C-44 basin, reducing average nutrient loads and improving salinity in the St. Lucie Estuary and the southern portion of the Indian River Lagoon. It will provide, in total, 60,500 acre-feet of new water storage (50,600 acre-feet in the reservoir and 9,900 acre-feet in the STAs) and 3,600 acres of new wetlands. 
The Indian River Lagoon is considered the most biologically diverse estuarine system in the continental United States and is home to more than 3,000 species of plants and animals. The C-44 Reservoir and Stormwater Treatment Area is the first component of the multi-billion-dollar Indian River Lagoon-South project, an element of the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan (CERP). 
Additional information on the C-44 Reservoir and STA is available by clicking here.

150914-c
World Governments: Keep fossil fuels underground
Act.350.org
September 14, 2015
2015 is on track to be the hottest year in recorded history, and this December world governments will meet in Paris for the biggest climate talks since 2009.
Right now, commitments by world governments are falling short of where the world needs them to be. We need way more ambition. We need action on a historic scale.
Our message is simple: Keep fossil fuels in the ground -- really, just stop digging -- and start building renewable energy. Turn off the old kind of energy that’s killing us, and turn on a renewable future. Do it now.
A commitment by world governments to keep 80% of fossil fuels underground would be the strongest signal yet that the days of dirty, dangerous fossil fuels are over. World leaders have a chance to do the right thing: stand with the people on the front lines of this crisis who are fighting for their lives. Stand with faith leaders, with scientists, and with the climate movement. Stand up against the industry that’s pushing us over the brink.

150913-
South Florida's heat is key to boom of pythons and cold-blooded cousins
Miami Herald- by Jenny Staletovich
September 13, 2015
If Floridians ever want to rid the state of Burmese pythons, tegus and other slithery invaders, they should hope for cold.
A new University of Florida study has confirmed what scientists have long suspected: Temperature, more than habitat, determines where reptiles invade. Using the kind of risk assessment strategy normally used in business, researchers modeled where invasive lizards and geckos were likely to live based on native habits, and then compared that to where they live in Florida. Temperature creates an invisible barrier.
And that means South Florida is likely to remain the nation's hottest spot for invasive species.
Scientists started thinking about the power of temperature after a severe 2010 cold snap froze iguanas and wiped out pythons in unprecedented numbers, said Frank Mazzotti, a biologist and one of the study's five authors..
"That's when people really began to appreciate that acute cold events may often be as important or more important than regular cold weather," he said. "It's not how cold it gets all the time. It's how cold it gets when it really gets cold."
To test their theory, researchers looked at the invasive reptiles on the Florida landscape. They then whittled down the list to include only reptiles that are well understood in their native ranges, which could provide enough data to feed into their models. Pythons, while a bigger threat, didn't make the cut. Neither did tegus or Nile monitor lizards, two more-aggressive egg-eating, cat-consuming invaders.
Instead, they came up with 14 geckos, lizards and anoles, everyday invaders like the Hispaniola green anole and common wall gecko. They then compared their native ranges to their appearance in Florida.
The models showed that for reptiles, temperature matters most -- in particular, low temperatures. While temperature most accurately predicted location for the whole group, the type of land played a varying role depending on the species. Mediterranean house geckos were less picky about whether they lived in wetlands or a pine rockland. Star lizards were far more finicky, leading researchers to conclude that adding land type improves predictions.
Researchers also found that most exotics thrive in South Florida's steamy tropics, which tend to more-closely match native ranges.
Being able to target likely hotspots could br a valuable tool in fighting the spread of invasive species that can destroy native wildlife and cost far more to remove once they become established, Mazzotti said.

150912-
Embrace fracking
Miami Herald – Letter by Michelle Cera, Weston, FL
September 12, 2015
We all agree that water is a precious resource in Florida, fueling our tourism economy and sustaining the environment.
It is understandable then, with so much misinformation circulating about fracking, that many people are nervous about it. However, the true danger lies in relying on emotion-driven misinformation rather than on facts.
State Sens. Darren Soto and Dwight Bullard are introducing a bill for the 2016 legislative session that would ban hydraulic fracturing in Florida.
Perhaps the senators are not familiar with the Environmental Protection Agency and the report it issued earlier this summer that shows absolutely no evidence that fracking contaminates the water supply. They must also be unfamiliar with the American energy renaissance that’s taking place, largely because of fracking.
Fracking has been around decades and not only is it not harmful, it is beneficial in terms of our economy and national security.

150911-a
Court: EPA's water rule in effect in Alabama, most other states
EP Newswire
September 11, 2015 
The Waters of the United States (WOTUS) rule, released by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Army Corps of Engineers earlier this year, officially is in effect in Alabama after a federal court's clarification.
The rule, which has been heavily contested by some states and industry groups since the release of its initial draft, was challenged with several lawsuits immediately after its finalization. North Dakota Federal District Court Judge Ralph Erickson issued an injunction against the rule’s implementation based on a lawsuit by several states.
Erickson recently clarified that the injunction only applies to the states involved in that lawsuit: North Dakota, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Idaho, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, South Dakota and Wyoming. 
While Alabama is also involved in a lawsuit, along with West Virginia, Florida, Georgia, Kansas, Kentucky, South Carolina, Utah and Wisconsin, among others, that suit is not covered by Erickson’s injunction, meaning the rule goes into effect in all states except for the aforementioned suit's dozen states. Because of this, the American Farm Bureau Federation is urging the Senate to pass a bill that would prevent the EPA from implementing the rule outright, similar to a measure passed by the House in May.

150911-b
Florida Five: Fla.’s lawsuit climate among nation’s worst, House speakers back Jeb
BizPack Review
September 11, 2015
Five of today’s top Florida political stories at your fingertips:
Florida’s lawsuit climate ranks among nation’s worst – Florida’s lawsuit climate is among the worst in the country, according to a new national survey released today by the U.S. Chamber Institute for Legal Reform. The Sunshine State ranked No. 44 out of the 50 states, with Miami-Dade County cited as one of the eight least-fair court jurisdictions nationwide. Read more
Florida House speakers line up in support of Jeb Bush – Let there be no doubt that Florida’s Republican establishment wants Jeb Bush for president. Bush, who amassed a wealth of Tallahassee political capital in his eight years as governor, has nabbed formal endorsements from all but two recent GOP speakers of the Florida House of Representatives, several of whom have already been raising money for the candidate. Read more
Legislature asks court to dismiss Amendment 1 lawsuit – The Florida Legislature has filed a motion asking a trial judge to dismiss a lawsuit filed by environmental groups that alleged the House and Senate misappropriated $237 million in Amendment 1 spending in the new state budget. Read more
South Florida Water Management District gets new leader – Another leadership shake up at the South Florida Water Management District puts one of Gov. Rick Scott’s former lieutenants in charge of the agency that guards against flooding and protects water supplies. The district board, appointed by Scott, accepted Executive Director Blake Guillory’s resignation early Thursday and soon after named Scott’s former general counsel, Peter Antonacci, as the agency’s new leader. Read more
Tom Lee will try again to overhaul alimony, custody laws – State Sen. Tom Lee won’t give up on trying to amend Florida law on alimony and child custody. On Thursday, Lee filed a bill (SB 250) to change the way divorces are handled in state courts. This marks at least the third time since 2013 that Lee, a Brandon Republican, has supported such an overhaul bill. It will be considered in the 2016 regular session.

150911-c
Speaker to detail despoiling of Everglades Sept. 29
Camden Herald
September 11, 2015
Camden — Ted Raia will discuss the influence of the sugar industry and the demise of the Everglades at the Camden Public Library, 55 Main Street, Tuesday evening, Sept. 29, at 7 p.m.
Raia will be speaking on the blight of UNESCO’s World Heritage ...
To continue reading, become a member.
Already a member, please login

150910-a
Construction nears finish on major Everglades water quality project
SFWMD News
September 10, 2015
A-1 shallow reservoir is set to be the first project completed for the State’s Restoration Strategies plan.
West Palm Beach, FL — With 16,500 cubic yards of concrete, 2,100 tons of steel and 21 miles of levees, a massive new South Florida Water Management District (SFWMD) project to improve Everglades water quality is nearing completion and set to start operations.
Water already has begun flowing into the A-1 Flow Equalization Basin (FEB), which will help optimize wetlands that clean phosphorus from water before it reaches the Everglades. The basin will be the first project completed as part of the State’s Restoration Strategies plan to improve water quality for the River of Grass.
“Completing this significant project and continuing progress on others is how we achieve water quality goals,” said Jeff Kivett, SFWMD Director of Operations, Engineering and Construction. “The A-1 will soon be fully operating and providing its intended critical restoration benefits to the Everglades.”
A-1: How it Works
With the capacity to hold 60,000 acre-feet of water at a site west of U.S. 27 in Palm Beach County, the A-1 was designed to capture and store peak stormwater flows during the wet season or during heavy rainfall events. Emergent vegetation such as bulrush and cattail planted within the site will help reduce the concentration of phosphorus in the water.
A system of 21 miles of earthen levees and 15 water control structures — 10 with solar power — within A-1 gives water managers the new ability to deliver water at the right time and in the right quantity to the vast Stormwater Treatment Areas (STAs) 2 and 3/4 to the south and east.
Achieving optimal water flow to these constructed wetlands enables emergent and submerged aquatic vegetation such as southern naiad to most effectively and naturally remove nutrients from the water that eventually flows to Everglades National Park.
The District operates a network of five STAs south of Lake Okeechobee with an effective treatment area of 57,000 acres. Since 1994, the treatment areas have retained more than 2,012 metric tons of total phosphorus that would have otherwise entered the Everglades.
Fast Facts
Construction of the A-1 required massive amounts of land, material and heavy equipment, including,
• 15,000-acre footprint
• 1.6 million cubic yards of fill material, all mined on-site
• 3.1 million cubic yards of muck was degraded and used as topsoil
• 23 massive, 40-ton articulated dump trucks
• 150 construction personnel on-site each day
Construction of the A-1 benefited from significant work already completed at the site for a reservoir originally planned to provide deep water storage, known as the EAA Reservoir. Restoration Strategies Background In June 2012, the State of Florida and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency reached a consensus on new strategies for improving water quality in America’s Everglades. (Click the map for a larger version.)
Based on months of scientific and technical discussions, these strategies will expand water quality improvement projects to achieve the ultralow phosphorus water quality standard established for the Everglades.
Key features of the plan include:
• Design and construction of 116,000 acre-feet of additional storage adjacent to existing Everglades STAs, better controlling water flow into the treatment wetlands and thereby improving their performance. These storage areas, known as Flow Equalization Basins, will be designed to assist all five Everglades STAs.
• Design and construction of the Stormwater Treatment Area 1 West expansion, increasing by 50 percent the treatment capacity of water quality facilities currently discharging into the Arthur R. Marshall Loxahatchee National Wildlife Refuge.
• Additional sub-regional source controls in areas of the eastern EAA where phosphorus levels in runoff have been historically higher, building on the District’s existing Best Management Practices (BMPs) Regulatory Program.

150910-b
Ecological myths of Southwest Florida
Florida Weekly – by Win Everham, Professor of marine and ecological sciences at FGCU
September 10, 2015
“This is a very big place and I do not know how it works, nor how I fit in. I am a member of a fragile species, still new to the earth ... We are only tentatively set in place, error prone, at risk of fumbling, in real danger at the moment of leaving behind only a thin layer of our fossils …”
ANALYSIS
In that passage from his book “The Fragile Species,” Lewis Thomas was writing as a medical doctor, but he could have been an ecologist.
Mr. Thomas understood how much we still don’t know and that question of how we fit in is the essence of the science of ecology. Ecology is a young science — only 100 years old. Ecologists are concerned with where species are found and why, and the structure and function of ecosystems. These are complex questions. Ecology is not rocket science; it is much more complicated than that.
If you think we will run out of water or land, that the exotic species we move over the planet are all bad, that saving endangered species is critical, or that we can solve our problems with better engineering and better science, the science of ecology tells us you may be wrong.
Myth 1: We will run out of water
In Southwest Florida, the ecology is all about water: where it is, how long it stays there, how clean it is, how humans have changed all that. But water is a renewable resource. We have the same amount as we did 4 billion years ago. The hydrologic cycle of evaporation, precipitation, runoff and underground flow cycles water continuously over the planet and has an inbuilt purification step. Each time water evaporates, or is pulled up by the sun through the stomata of leaves, the impurities are left behind. We should always have water.
Ecologists created a concept called carrying capacity, which identifies the maximum number of a species that can be supported indefinitely in a given environment, based on the average need per individual. Following this concept, it turns out, our water resources in Southwest Florida can support about 98 million people, or 80 times more than we have today.
However, carrying capacity relates a single resource to a single species. To reach that target, we would need to capture every bit of rainfall, have the whole region covered with impervious surfaces leading to cisterns, no plants except what we want to grow, no ponds for fish where some water would evaporate, and no runoff to the estuaries.
Before we arrived on this landscape every bit of water was used by the plants and animals that were already here. Each new person alters the magnitude and timing of what historically were the flows of water across this landscape, and that has a cost.
What we will run out of is cheap water. The issue will be who absorbs the cost and how much can we spare for the plants and animals who share this landscape.
Myth 2: We will run out of land
Unlike water, land is a finite resource, but like water it can be reused. We can continue to build up, condemn some of those coastal mansions and build apartment buildings, at least until sea level rise floods those sites. Like water, we will run out of cheap land. Perhaps we already have. In 1967, in “The Population Bomb,” Paul Erlich spun out the scenario that if the human population continued at its then rate for 900 years, we would then have 60 million billion people on the planet (6 followed by 16 zeros). He claimed we could house those people with a 2,000-story building with the top floors dedicated to hydroponics and heat dissipation. Each person would have about 3 to 4 square yards. He guessed that before we reached that density, disease or hunger would stop our growth. I think before we got to that many people, we would run out of people who would want to live here.
Majorie Stoneman Douglas once stated “the Everglades are a test. If we pass it we get to keep the planet.” Respectfully, I would say she was wrong. Either way, we keep the planet; we just might not want it anymore. If we fail to guide the growth on our landscape, we will run out of people who want to live here. Then who do we share the land with?
Myth 3: Exotic species have no value
We tend to think all exotic species are bad. That is not necessarily true. It’s interesting to note that all citrus — including Key lime — and most of what we eat, are exotic plants. So are most of the animals we eat. Exotic-infested ecosystems continue to serve an ecological function, capturing solar energy and sequestering nutrients. Further, exotic species increase the diversity of the systems they invade, at least initially. The issue is balance.
We need to focus on the species that dominate their communities and ultimately cause a loss of diversity. This happens in about one in 10 species that become naturalized, and only about one in 10 of the species that are introduced into the ecosystem become naturalized. There are about 2,000 plants native to South Florida and more than 20,000 species that are grown here for agricultural or horticultural reasons. Without the checks and balances found in their native lands, these invasives can explode across the landscape and damage native biodiversity.
Humans are exotics to this landscape as well. By most measures we would also have to be considered invasive. But I have hope for our species. Through natural selection or the act of the Creator (or both), we have minds that allow us to both reshape our environment and consider our actions. If we view this power with its associated responsibility and have the will to do so, we can plan for the future and control our impacts.
Myth 4: Endangered species have critical ecological roles
So, what if we lose our last panther? The answer: It’s unlikely to cause a devastating ecological cascade.
So why should we protect endangered species? Perhaps the justification should not be ecological; it should be moral or ethical. The Book of Genesis in the King James version of the Bible, Chapter 1, verse 26 reads “And God said, Let us make man in our own image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.” This version of the Bible was translated within a cultural context of the feudal system, where “dominion” was derived from the domain of the lord, who had responsibility for maintaining the health of the people and the productivity of the land. I believe if the Bible was translated in our current cultural context, that word would be “stewardship.” If this is a moral issue to protect God’s creation, then we don’t need to try to put a dollar value on protecting biodiversity.
Still, it may also be an ecological issue. Experimental data is accumulating to show the resilience of ecosystems is directly related to their diversity. Aldo Leopold wrote “To save every cog and wheel is the first principle for intelligent tinkering.” We need, both morally and ecologically, in our ignorance, to save “every cog and wheel,” as we continue to “tinker.”
Myth 5: The solution is better engineering
Another word for “tinkering” is engineering. In her book “Mirage: Florida and the Vanishing Water of the Eastern U.S.,” Cynthia Barnett stated that virtually every large-scale engineering effort to manage water has had unanticipated consequences. When she visited the FGCU campus she said she was wrong — every engineering fix has!
In 2001, I helped lead a trip to the Peruvian Amazon. While there, we heard a presentation of how people farmed the flood plain, moving down into the rich flood lands after the water recedes, building temporary housing, raising a crop, then moving back to the highlands before the next floods. It occurred to me that if we had similar water flow across our landscape, we would build dikes and dams to hold back or control the high water, but then we would disrupt the natural flood cycle that provided the nutrient-rich bottom lands to farm. We similarly tried to control the Everglades watershed, and we find ourselves a few decades later trying to replicate the natural flow of water over the land.
Certainly part of the solution to our environmental challenges will be better engineering, but we also need to understand natural systems and natural cycles to work with them rather than against them.
Myth 6: The solution is better science
As a teacher and a scientist, I believe it is my calling to try to understand the world and communicate that understanding, and in doing so, help make the world a better place. But scientists are not objective arbitrators of the truth. We are human. We have egos. We are invested in our ideas and we don’t like to be wrong.
Yet we are probably wrong more often than we are right.
The public often mistakes the results of science for science, memorizing what we discovered a generation ago and missing the point that at the edge of our understanding it is always messy and error-prone.
I think the process of science is like a courtroom. The sides on any scientific debate pile up their arguments and their evidence — data — and the larger scientific community ultimately determines who is right. The peer review process is rigorous. It takes time, but it works.
Today, we have a deeper understanding of the universe and greater access to technology than ever before. We are important. We shape the landscapes within which we live. We often determine which species are found where. We are the preeminent ecological force on the planet. Yet, as I consider my cell phone with Internet access and my email, which makes it easier for me to carry my work wherever I go, I wonder if my life is better?
Myth 7: It is not like it used to be
For much of its first century, ecology was dominated by a paradigm proposed by Fredrick Clements, that ecosystems move toward a climate-driven, self-sustaining “climax.” Ecosystems could be disturbed, but would return to their stable climax through predictable pathways of ecological succession. Everything that I know about ecological systems tells me Clements was wrong, in the longer-term. The illusion of stability is driven by our limited temporal experience with the land. Ecosystems have internal forces of mutation, competition that drives natural selection and evolutionary change of their component species, the players change as new species are introduced (at a much faster rate recently due to the actions of our species). They also have external abiotic environment changes: CO2 content varies, the planet warms and cools, sea levels change, every once in a while an asteroid hits us. Stability is ephemeral; the only constant in ecological systems is change.
An important caveat: The fact that CO2 and sea levels have changed in the past should not leave us complacent to the human-driven changes that are occurring right now. CO2 levels are increasing in the atmosphere. We are burning irreplaceable fossil fuels and releasing CO2. The seas are rising. Our climate is changing. Historically similar changes have resulted in extinctions. These are all facts. Some are still debating the degree to which the changes we see are human-driven. This debate is only important in the context of our response. Change is coming. We need to talk about how to respond to that change, not pretend that it isn’t happening.
Myth 8: I have the right to do my own thing
American culture was founded in part on the desire to protect individual rights. Our European ancestors came to these shores seeking freedom. Our African ancestors were dragged here, but ultimately found freedom. Unfortunately, we are often unwilling to grant our neighbors the same rights and freedoms we demand for ourselves. I think there needs to be an alternative acronym to recognize this. We all know NIMBY — not in my backyard, but we also practice NINBY — not in my neighbor’s back yard.
Ecologically this is nonsense – no human is an island. We are all interconnected by flows of matter and energy. My options are limited by the actions of those upstream from me, and my decisions influence those downstream from me. This is true whether we think in terms of watersheds, airsheds, food chains, other energy flows, or economic systems.
Myth 9: Democracy doesn’t work
This myth is self-fulfilling if we choose to believe it. What we require is an educated community committed to something larger than individual selfish needs. Democracy is hard work!
There is debate in our state right now about the role of higher education. Some wish to shape our colleges as places of “training” for employment. The root of “liberal arts” is liber (also the root for “liberty”) and this type of education is intended to meet the needs of a free people. In a world where education is limited to a privileged few, knowledge is power. In a democratic society, that knowledge needs to be universal.
Ecology teaches us that we are all connected. Democracy demands that we accept the reality that we are all in this together. The changes that will occur across our region in the coming decades will either engage us all as educated citizens of our landscape, or they will not.
In “The Journey Home” Edward Abbey wrote, “Human bodies and human wit, active here, there, everywhere, united in purpose, independent in action, can still face the machine (our current “technoindustrial juggernaut”) and stop it and take it apart and reassemble it — if we wish — on lines entirely new. There is, after all, a better way to live. The poets and the prophets have been trying to tell us about it for 3,000 years.” Perhaps the science of ecology can help point us in the right direction. ¦

150910-c









Pete ANTONACCI
new SFWMD
Executive Director

150910-c
Political insider takes the reins at South Florida water district
Miami Herald – by Jenny Staletovich
September 10, 2015
A political insider who served as general counsel to Gov. Rick Scott will take over the state’s largest water management district.
On Thursday, the South Florida Water Management District’s governing board named Pete Antonacci to run the sprawling agency after announcing that executive director Blake Guillory, an engineer, would resign at the end of the month. Antonacci becomes the only director overseeing one of the state’s major districts without a background in science.
“It appears that Antonacci’s primary qualification is his close relationship with Gov. Scott,” Audubon Florida Executive Director Eric Draper said. “But it doesn’t change the fact that the water management district is facing a budget crisis that will undermine Everglades restoration, water supply and flood protection.”
Guillory’s resignation follows a contentious summer in which the board flip-flopped on a tax cut. In July, board members agreed to maintain the tax rate, ending four years of cuts and keeping the district from dipping into reserves to balance its $754 million budget. The agency, which employs 1,550, handles flood protection for a third of the state along with overseeing decades-long efforts to restore the state’s ailing Everglades.
But the decision defied Scott’s longstanding order to cut taxes. Two weeks later, the board called a second meeting and reversed the vote. Last week, Guillory’s chief of staff resigned.
On Thursday, after hastily adding the item to their regular meeting agenda the evening before, the board authorized chairman Dan O’Keefe to negotiate a severance package for Guillory and praised his work.
“It’s absolutely no secret the executive director position at this agency is one of the most challenging in the state,” board member Kevin Powers said. “You get pulled in every direction ... and pushed to the front line of some very contentious issues.”
Guillory, an engineering executive who focused on water projects, took over the 16-county district in 2013 after running the Southwest Florida Water Management District for two years, where he oversaw Scott-ordered cuts. He arrived at the West Palm Beach-based district to find an agency struggling after its budget had been cut in half and staff slashed by more than 300 positions.
In nominating Antonacci, 67, board member Jim Moran said the attorney’s “expertise and experience, particularly in Tallahassee, would be a tremendous asset.”
Antonacci, a Democrat-turned-Republican, spent much of his political career as a top assistant to former Attorney General Bob Butterworth, a Democrat who left office in 2002.
In 2012, Scott made Antonacci his general counsel, a position that put him in a small circle of advisers and, last year, in the middle of the controversial ouster of Florida Department of Law Enforcement Commissioner Gerald Bailey.
After he resigned, Bailey said Antonacci forced him out under Scott’s orders, allowing the governor to sidestep the state Cabinet to appoint a handpicked successor. The move led to a public records lawsuit that eventually cost the state $300,000 in settlement costs and legal fees. The settlement is just a fraction of more costly legal bills that stem from Antonacci’s stance on public records.
During the governor’s 2014 reelection campaign, Antonacci refused to produce records from former staffers, prompting Tallahassee lawyer Steven R. Andrews to expand a public records lawsuit against the governor to include the staffers, which bumped up costs. Andrews' legal disputes led to a settlement and legal fees that cost the state $1.2 million.
Antonacci has repeatedly declined to discuss his role in Bailey’s departure, which forced Scott and the Cabinet to institute changes that require more detailed public job reviews of the leaders of nearly a dozen state agencies.
For much of Scott's tenure, Antonacci also played an important behind-the-scenes role in the selection of judges to Florida's trial courts and the appointees to the state's 26 judicial nominating commissions. He advised Scott on a wide range of legal issues, from executions of Death Row inmates to lawsuits involving the state on issues such as regional water use, voting and drug testing of public employees.
Antonacci was also among the governor’s chief negotiators with the Seminole Tribe in 2014 when it sought to expand gaming options, which legislators rejected.
Shortly after returning to GrayRobinson, one of the state’s most politically engaged law firms, Antonacci signed up as a lobbyist working with the private prison healthcare company, Corizon. The company has been under fire by legislators for providing inadequate healthcare to inmates and overcharging the state for those services for inmates.
Antonacci also served, at Scott’s request, on the Supreme Court Judicial Nominating Commission, which will recommend a replacement for Justice James E.C. Perry, who must retire in 2017. In May, U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio appointed Antonacci to Florida's Federal Judicial Nominating Commission, which recommends candidates to be federal judges.
Between 1996 and 2011, Antonacci personally made nearly $16,000 in campaign contributions to politicians in both parties, from liberal Democrats such as Sen. Eleanor Sobel of Hollywood to conservative Republicans including Scott, records show. He also gave thousands of dollars to judges’ nonpartisan political campaigns.
“He’s not an ideologue. He’s just a really smart guy,” said Earth Justice attorney David Guest, who has battled the state over environmental issues for decades.
Antonacci represents a break from the past when scientists and engineers rose through the ranks to run agencies filled with fellow scientists. While critics say his appointment weakens the agency’s independence, Guest said the practice sometimes led to the concentration of too much power.
“Back in the ’80s, [former director] Woody Wodraska bragged that they had an airport bigger than seven countries. They had their own flag,” he said. “They had a larger presence in Washington than the governor did.”
Antonacci, who referred questions to board chairman Dan O’Keefe, also sat on the governing board of the Northwest Florida Water Management District from 2006 to 2012.
“The challenge Pete’s going to have is handling the staff he’s got,” Guest said. “Trying to control the staff at the South Florida Water Management District is like trying to control a waterbed rolling downhill. You don’t have to be that much of an expert on waterbeds.”
Scott praised the appointment after a luncheon in Leon County, telling reporters, “He did a great job as my general counsel. I’m sure he’ll do a great job there, but that was a decision by the board.”
Related:           Scott's ex-counsel to head South Florida Water District        WWSB ABC 7
Antonaci to head South Florida Water District          The Ledger
Gov. Rick Scott's former top lawyer will run huge water agency      Tampabay.com
Water district chief resigns without explanation        Palm Beach Pos
South Florida Water Management District     International-Sun Sentinel
Explore in depth 

150909-a
South Florida Water Management District leadership questions surface
Sun-Sentinel – by Andy Reid
September 9, 2015
The South Florida Water Management District's top job is up for discussion.
Another leadership change could be coming to the South Florida Water Management District.
The district board, appointed by Gov. Rick Scott, on Thursday morning is scheduled to discuss the agency’s executive director position. The agenda item was added late Wednesday afternoon.
That could mean Executive Director Blake Guillory is on his way out of leading the far-reaching agency, which guards against flooding and protects drinking water supplies in a 16-county region stretching from Orlando to Key West.
The district has already had three different executive directors since 2011 and another change now would come in the midst of hurricane season.
Guillory could not be reached for comment Wednesday afternoon, despite attempts by phone and email.
The South Florida Water Management District is the largest of the state’s five water management districts. The district, based in West Palm Beach, has about 1,500 employees and a $700 million budget.
In addition to safeguarding South Florida from flooding and managing water supplies, the district also leads Everglades restoration for the state.
Guillory, an engineer, has headed the district since 2013. He is the former executive director of the Southwest Florida Water Management District and prior to that was a vice president for the Brown & Caldwell water issues consulting firm.
Guillory replaced former executive director Melissa Meeker, who stepped down in May 2013 after two years to take a job with a private consulting firm.
Part of Guillory’s job has been to guide the district through a period of budget cutbacks that started after Scott took office, while also trying to make progress on long-planned Everglades restoration projects.
The district board this summer raised eyebrows in Tallahassee by initially balking at a tax cut favored by the Legislature and the governor.
In July, the board decided the agency couldn't afford to cut taxes about 8 percent and opted to keep the same tax rate. But just two weeks later, the board at the urging of state leaders held a special budget meeting and agreed to cut the property tax rate for the fifth year in a row.
Before the board’s flip flop, Guillory had included the tax cut in his budget proposal, writing that his spending plan would help “reduce the burden on South Florida property owners.”

150909-b
Water district will purchase land to protect Silver Springs
Associated Press (Bradenton Herald)
September 9, 2015
PALATKA, Fla. — A state water management district plans to purchase almost 5,000 acres around central Florida's famed Silver Springs.
The St. Johns River Water Management District on Tuesday approved buying Silver Springs Forest for $11.5 million. The land is owned by real estate company Rayonier Inc.
Silver Springs is one of Florida's earliest tourist attractions and became famous for its glass-bottom boats. A series of Tarzan movies were filmed there, as was "Creature from the Black Lagoon."
Environmentalists have been concerned about the health of Silver Springs due to heavy pumping of the Florida Aquifer by municipalities and growers.
Earlier this year, the district allowed a Canadian rancher to pump 1.5 million gallons a day from the aquifer into his ranch. An environmental group is appealing the decision.

150908-
Pair power generation, water cleansing
Palm Beach Post - Point of view by J. William Louda, Professor in Florida Atlantic University’s Environmental Sciences Program
September 8, 2015
I notice two recurrent themes in The Post: 1) freshwater supplies for people and for the Everglades; 2) electric power — namely, the need for solar power.
My suggestions follow. First, Florida Power & Light Co. missed an opportunity — desalination — when the power plants at Riviera Beach and Fort Lauderdale were converted to natural gas.
Florida has a bad taste in its mouth from the Port Manatee TECO (Tampa Electric Co.) operation. It uses turbid Tampa Bay water to cool the electric plant and to make fresh water by desalination.
Tampa Bay water is cloudy, so filtration problems and associated higher costs exist. However, on the east coast, the continental-shelf break (about 460 feet) is but a few miles offshore, and water depths plunge rapidly. Deep waters (500 to 1,000 feet) are very clear and have a low load of suspended solids.
Using this sea water would cut filtration needs tremendously. Additionally, the brine concentrate could then be discharged at even lower depths and, if done with proper dispersion, should have minimal environmental impact. Yes, several miles of pipe would need to be laid.
Desalination, co-located with coastal power stations, would go far in providing coastal South Florida with freshwater supplies, and using reclaimed water for landscaping would decrease the need for potable fresh water.
Second, the formation of what I term a “solar marsh” could provide surface-water cleansing and electricity — with a zero carbon footprint. A huge part of the cost of stormwater treatment areas (STAs) and solar-energy grids is the land. The solar-marsh concept would lead to cost-sharing among water managers (e.g., South Florida Water Management District, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers) and power companies (e.g., FPL).
New or existing STAs could be overlaid with photovoltaic solar panels, which can allow a portion of the sun’s energy to pass through and thus provide for the growth of periphyton (algal-bacterial communities) as well as plants.
Through my studies in the Everglades, I know the periphyton there are getting higher amounts of solar radiation than needed. Solar panels that block only some sunlight are on the market.
All that is needed to pursue these alternatives to the status quo is the initiative of decision-makers.

150907-a
21 injured after Everglades' tour airboats collide
Local10.com – by Terrell Forney, Reporter
September 7, 2015
2 Gator Park 'safari' tour airboats crash -- sending 21 to hospital.
MIAMI-DADE COUNTY, Fla. -
Two airboats on a "safari" tour of the Everglades National Park collided, leaving 21 injured after a miscommunication Monday, a Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission spokesman said.
There were 48 passengers aboard the two airboats and two vessel operators. Some people fell into the water after the boats collided about three miles out into the Florida Everglades -- home to alligators and boa constrictors.
"Seconds before impact we knew what was happening and you just had to brace yourself and hold on," Peter Brown, who was on one of the boats, said. "And once that happened, obviously there was lots of screaming, people in pain and what have you."
"One girl nearly fell, and she came out from the other boat and landed in our boat. She was half in the water and half in our boat," another victim, Jane Austin, said. "It was fast. It was full throttle."
Two other airboats picked up the stranded -- including the 21 who suffered minor injuries -- and took them to Gator Park, 24050 SW 8th St., in southwest Miami-Dade. Passengers were given refunds.
Miami-Dade Fire Rescue responded and took the injured to Kendall Regional Medical Center, South Miami Hospital, Baptist Hospital and West Kendall Baptist Hospital.
FWC officials were investigating. The damaged airboats were out at the scene Monday afternoon, as thunderstorms approached.

150907-b
Protecting Everglades ends way of life for Gladesmen
Associated Press
September 7, 2015
EVERGLADES NATIONAL PARK, Fla. (AP) – The aging gladesmen of the River of Grass will eventually have to retire their flying jon boats under new rules for Everglades National Park that instead promise to protect the nation’s largest tropical wilderness for generations to come.
The rules, the first new ones since 1978, have taken more than a dozen years to draft as park managers struggled to balance a sometimes conflicting mission: safeguarding fragile wetlands downstream from sprawling farms and dense urban areas while attracting visitors to a largely inaccessible wilderness that covers 1.5 million acres across three counties.
While the new rules released Aug. 28 will restrict uses in some areas – in addition to phasing out airboat operations, a network of no-motor zones will crisscross Florida Bay – the park also plans to open up Joe Bay, a crocodile habitat marked off-limits for 30 years, for catch-and-release fishing.
“It ends up giving everybody a lot, but nobody gets everything,” said park Superintendent Pedro Ramos. “I think this plan does hit that sweet spot.”
More than 100 public meetings were held to weigh the complicated uses of a park that includes trails for daytrippers, as well as a vast remote backcountry visited by anglers and wildlife enthusiasts who relish miles of shallow flats, tangled mangrove forests and a labyrinth of islands on the west coast. At the same time, the park wanted to attract concessions that might draw new visitors. The new rules are set to become final in 30 days.
“One of the topics that is very important to us is this issue of relevance,” Ramos said.
In 2011, staff members also decided to take a step back and factor in climate change, a decision that led to dramatic new designs for elevated lodgings at Flamingo Visitor Center, where the only overnight accommodations were destroyed by Hurricane Wilma in 2005.
Among the hardest-fought changes was the move to phase out airboat operators, a decision that was written into the 1989 congressional act that expanded the park. When the 109,000 acres east of the Shark River Slough were added to the park, Congress wanted the land managed as a wilderness. But the generations of airboat operators who grew up zipping across the marshes consider themselves among the wetlands’ original stewards and argue they have a cultural heritage that should be protected.
“We’ve been around longer than the national park. The gladesmen have a history that goes back 150 years,” said Keith Price, president of the Airboat Association of Florida, whose father managed fuel pumps at Coot Bay for shrimpers while his mother ran the station restaurant. “In other national parks, they’ve turned back to the traditional use, just regulated the way they want it. It’s not like we’re asking for something that’s impossible or that’s never been done.”
But park officials say the law gave them no choice. The airboats had to go.
“We talked with those folks a lot and really tried to strike a balance,” said Fred Herling, supervisory park planner.
Airboaters who can prove they used the area in 1989 will be given non-transferable lifetime permits, while four commercial airboat operations will be brought under park management. The park plans to purchase land where the four businesses now operate along the south side of Tamiami Trail and strike concession deals with the current owners.
“It’s a good thing we’re still being allowed to operate in the national park in an area the family’s been in since 1945. The bad thing is they’re going to tell us how many runs we can have a day,” said Jesse Kennon, owner of Coopertown, a seven-boat fleet. Kennon also worried about how long the park would be willing to extend contracts.
“Rules can change. What they tell you today is not necessarily going to be the same thing 10 years from now,” he said. “Hopefully, my great-great-grandkids will be able to enjoy the Everglades in the same fashion and have a family-owned business.”
Another critical area that concerned managers is shallow Florida Bay. Ailing from decades of old flood-control measures that robbed the bay of historical freshwater flows, the bay has become increasingly salty. Populations of prey fish are down, scars crisscross flats where seagrass can take years to regrow, and guides say the bonefish that once drew anglers from around the world are vanishing.
In an effort to protect the bay, which on average is just three feet deep, park managers will start requiring boaters in the park to obtain a permit and complete an educational course. They also drafted a network of no-motor or pole-and-troll zones. The complicated grid will be available on a GPS app the park is now creating and “minimally marked to protect the wilderness character,” Herling said.
For anglers and guides, the rules could prove challenging, said Duane Baker, commodore of the Florida Keys Fishing Guides Association.
“It will be confusing, and they’re going to have to learn a new way of doing it,” he said, adding that the association has worked with park staff members for two years to understand how tides moved across the flats. “Navigating back there really isn’t for a beginning boater anyway, so I don’t know if this will help a beginning boater or if they’re going to get into more trouble.”
One drawback is the lack of law enforcement, Baker said.
“There’s days out there, you could go four or five and not see a ranger on the water,” he said.
But park officials say they plan to use fees collected from boat permits to hire more enforcement staff. And park advocates say they plan to pressure the park to follow through.
“This has been a perennial issue,” said John Adornato, regional director for the National Parks Association Conservation Association. “It used to be that both national park and (state) rangers were patrolling the waters . but the state has cut its budget, too. So there’s a direct negative effect.”
And while park managers say they took great pains to balance the needs of users with the mission to protect resources, at least one environmental group complained too little was done.
“What we were calling for is a quieter, gentler Everglades National Park,” said Matthew Schwartz, director of the South Florida Wildlands Association. By allowing even commercial airboats, he complained the park “opens up the door to status quo.”
But Adornato praised the plan, saying it elevates South Florida’s beloved wetland wilderness to “its place next to Yellowstone, Yosemite or the Grand Canyon.”

150907-c
Time to invest in a critical resource: our water
Miami Herald – Letter by Irela M. Bagué, Chair, Sustainability, Environment & Energy Committee, Greater Miami Chamber of Commerce, Miami
September 7, 2015
For years, Miami-Dade’s water and sewer rates have been among the lowest in the United States, but it has come at a cost.
Plans for improvements to our water infrastructure were delayed until the EPA stepped in a few years ago and forced Miami-Dade County to take a hard, sobering look at the aged and decaying conditions of its water and sewer system.
Since then, the county has taken proactive measures to create a robust and holistic capital-improvement program that will not only rehabilitate but also design and construct a world-class system to address our continued growth and impending climate-change challenges.
It is expected that Miami-Dade Water & Sewer Department’s (MDWASD) Capital Improvement Program (CIP) will provide greatly needed economic benefits to our business community. The $13.5-billion investment over the next 15 years will generate more than 16,000 jobs and create more than $25 billion of economic activity within Miami-Dade over the next 10 years, in addition to facilitating economic growth throughout all sectors of the regional economy.
As the voice of business in South Florida, the Greater Miami Chamber of Commerce has adopted a resolution in support of the Capital Improvement Program. The resolution affirms the substantial public investment that will yield environmental and economic benefits for years to come.
The CIP is the largest capital program ever undertaken by any department of Miami-Dade County’s government. It will provide an unprecedented opportunity for smaller local engineering and construction firms to participate and grow with the program.
MDWASD has hosted a series of countywide community open houses to provide the public with an overview of the program. These efforts go a long way to provide accountability, transparency and reassurance to the ratepayers that funding is going where it is needed. The CIP is designed to address aging infrastructure, comply with regulatory requirements and support economic growth while still keeping utility rates competitive with rates elsewhere in Florida and across the nation.
Water is the most critical resource in our daily lives, yet we often take it for granted. No one would argue the need to invest in healthcare, education or transportation, yet our past investments in water have been inadequate.
The time has come to focus on ensuring continued funding for our water infrastructure moving into the future in order to grow our economy and guarantee a clean, sustainable and affordable water supply for future generations.

150906-a
Oil spill settlement provides unprecedented opportunity
Tallahassee Democrat - My View by Temperince Morgan, Executive Director of The Nature Conservancy’s Florida Chapter
September 6, 2015
The landmark BP Deepwater Horizon settlement and last year’s passage of Amendment 1 mean unprecedented funding will be designated for protecting, restoring and managing Florida’s environment for many years. If we seize this moment by investing wisely and collaboratively, future generations of Floridians will be grateful for our foresight.
With a nearly $3.25 billion share of the oil spill settlement, and an estimated $10 billion over 20 years generated by Amendment 1, we must develop a long-term, comprehensive and science-based plan for how to wisely invest in natural resource conservation.
Determining specific allocations will be difficult, but the certainty is that there is unprecedented funding now dedicated for Florida’s natural resources. With this comes responsibility and opportunity for collaboration among all levels of government and with the private sector to identify common goals and implement coordinated actions.
While the Legislature has allocated this year’s Amendment 1 funds, legislators have not yet developed a comprehensive plan for future funds. We encourage them to do so in a way that represents the interests of Floridians and our state’s environmental priorities.
Similarly, the time is now to ensure expenditure of oil spill settlement funding is coordinated and leveraged to achieve Gulf ecosystem restoration. For example, Gulf economic development funds could be used to establish a fund that finances wastewater and stormwater infrastructure to improve the water quality of our watersheds and estuaries.
We will never again have this opportunity. Meeting the intent of both funding sources requires:
•Strategic protection and management of land to protect and improve our waters, provide outdoor recreation, support tourism, sustain Florida’s traditional natural resource industries such as agriculture and forestry, and ensure adequate, connected habitat for native plants and animals
•Protection and restoration of our aquatic preserves and estuary, bay and river habitats that are safe harbors for a diversity of recreational and economically important wildlife and plants that help clean our waters and buffer communities from storms and floods
•Protection and restoration of water resources including our exceptional springs and the international treasure that is the Everglades
•Support of urban green spaces to make cities more livable and resilient by naturally providing cooling, water filtration and floodwater control — a service that’s particularly critical around the Gulf, where vulnerability to storms this time of year is so high
A just-completed public opinion poll on the BP Oil Spill sponsored by The Nature Conservancy and the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership finds that 74 percent of voters in Florida’s Gulf Coast counties want the funding that results from the BP spill invested in natural system restoration. This finding complements the results of last fall’s ballot on Amendment 1 that won a 75 percent majority of the state’s voters. Bottom line — Floridians care deeply about their environment.
We now have a unique opportunity to realize their hopes with effective use of the funds that have been authorized by the oil spill settlement and voters. This is our opportunity to ensure productivity of the Gulf, sustain Florida’s lands and waters, and support the communities and economies that depend on these resources. Let’s not miss it.

150906-b
Pipeline foes ask DEP to deny key permit, cite ‘conflict of interest’ by Gov. Rick Scott
Miami Herald - by Dan Christensen, FloridaBulldog.org
September 6, 2015
Opponents of a proposed natural gas pipeline in North Florida are asking Florida regulators to reject the project, citing both dangers to the environment and a “conflict of interest” by the regulators’ boss, Gov. Rick Scott.
The Florida Department of Environmental Protection announced in July its intention to award a crucial environmental permit and rights to drill beneath riverbeds that would allow Houston-based Spectra Energy to construct the controversial, $3 billion Sabal Trail Transmission.
State records show Spectra Energy’s investors have included Scott.
On Aug. 28, the nonprofit WWALs Watershed Coalition, an affiliate of the Waterkeeper Alliance, filed an amended petition asking the DEP to deny the permit or “at the very least” reroute the underground pipeline to avoid “the sensitive karst terrain that underlies north central Florida … especially drilling under the Withlacoochee, Suwannee and Santa Fe rivers.”
“The risk is not just to these waters … it is to the entire state of Florida whose growing population relies on the Floridan aquifer for much of its drinking water,” says the 34-page petition filed by WWALs president John S. Quarterman. The Floridan aquifer underlies all of Florida and parts of Alabama, Georgia and South Carolina.
Spectra Energy spokeswoman Andrea Grover, however, noted that DEP’s notice of intent to issue the permit followed nearly a year of discussions and review. “The permit requires full mitigation of all wetland impacts and protects water quality,” she said.
If accepted as legally sufficient by DEP, the petition would put the brakes on the department’s plans to issue the permit and trigger an administrative hearing before any permit could be awarded. A DEP spokeswoman said last week that the department’s lawyers are reviewing the petition.
The 474-mile Sabal Trail Transmission LLC is a joint venture of Spectra Energy Partners and Florida Power & Light parent NextEra Energy. It is intended to supply fracked natural gas to fuel a new generation of gas-fired power plants across the state, including Port Everglades.
Sabal Trail is to run across Alabama and through southern Georgia and then enter northern Florida. The Florida leg, 257 miles long, will push south through a dozen counties to a hub in Central Florida south of Orlando. Along the way, the pipeline would be installed beneath several rivers.
‘Reasonable assurance’
In the July 10 notice of intent, DEP Central District Director Jeff Prather wrote that Sabal Trail had provided DEP with “reasonable assurance” that pipeline construction would comply with state laws and rules. Likewise, Prather wrote, the department determined that “construction and operation” of the Sabal Trail pipeline would not violate state water quality standards.
“The applicant has also demonstrated that the construction … is clearly in the public interest,” Prather said.
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission is the lead federal agency responsible for reviewing the Sabal Trail proposal and preparing an environmental impact statement. FERC’s decision could come as early as November.
The WWALs petition argues that the project is “clearly not in the public interest of the citizens of Hamilton and Suwannee counties who will be affected … without any benefit whatsoever.”
The petition describes the lands in North Florida along Sabal Trail’s proposed route as a rich habitat for native wildlife — including threatened species like the gopher tortoise and the eastern indigo snake.
The area is honeycombed with sinkholes and sensitive underground springs and caverns at special risk from the proposed, 36-inch natural gas pipeline. Forested lands will be cleared and wetlands filled to make way for the pipeline, substantially reducing wildlife habitat, a plan that is “not acceptable,” the petition says.
Drilling through the area’s karst terrain, formed by the gradual erosion of Florida’s limestone or dolomite rocks, could cause new sinkholes that could cause pipeline failure, property damage or even human injury, the petition says.
More ominously, the petition says the proposed use of horizontal directional drilling to bore through karst limestone in order to lay underground pipe at river crossings increases the risk of “frac-outs” that happen when a drill bores into an underground spring. The result can be a new sinkhole “resulting in potentially catastrophic effects on spring and river flows and water quality in both rivers and private wells.”
MORE STUDY NEEDED?
The petition calls for more study before such drilling “destroys underground caverns and spring conduits that may cause the extinction” of exotic species.
Further, the petition cited the possibility of a pipeline failure and an explosion that would damage the underground karst terrain and springs and kill designated or threatened species like the alligator snapping turtle, American alligator and Suwannee cooter turtle.
The petition points out that a Spectra Energy pipeline exploded beneath the Arkansas River in Little Rock on May 31. It goes on to note that Spectra has been repeatedly fined by federal regulators in the U.S. and Canada for “failing to properly maintain and repair their pipelines and for failing to clean up contamination” when their pipelines leaked.
“Why is Florida DEP trusting this company with our valuable natural resources?” the petition asks.
Spectra Energy presents a different picture.
“Our safety record is better than the industry average,” spokeswoman Andrea Grover said. “Our reportable incidents were approximately half the rate of the industry average during the past five years.”
During the same period, Grover said, Spectra Energy operated about 4 percent of the nation’s natural gas transmission pipelines, yet received only 2 percent of the enforcement actions initiated by U.S. Department of Transportation’s Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration.
Florida’s Department of Environmental Protection serves as staff to the Board of Trustees of the Florida Internal Improvement Fund, which owns the submerged lands beneath the rivers where Spectra Energy wants to run the pipeline. The DEP is the delegated decision-making authority to issue an easement to allow construction under the Florida Administrative Code.
The WWALS petition says Scott, in his role as a member of the fund’s board of trustees, has a “conflict of interest” due to his “financial interests in Spectra Energy, the parent company of Sabal Trail Transmissions, as well as in Williams Company, the owner of the Transco pipeline from which Sabal Trail plans to get its gas.
“The governor and other public officials are prohibited by state ethics laws from owning stock in businesses subject to their regulation or that do business with state agencies,” the petition says.
In response, Scott’s office issued a statement saying the public is protected from conflicts of interests because his assets are in a blind trust “under the control of an independent financial professional. As such, the governor has no knowledge of anything that is bought, sold or changed in the trust.”
As FloridaBulldog.org has reported, however, the blind trust has not prevented public disclosure of Scott’s personal stock holdings. On June 25, for example, Scott and the trust reported to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission that Scott had sold 122,653 shares of Argan earlier that month for $4.87 million. Argan’s Gemma Power Systems subsidiary builds and operates power plants in Florida and elsewhere.

150906-c
Rising sea levels threaten NASA's launch sites: How the agency is responding
Christian Science Monitor – by Beatrice Gitau
September 6, 2015
The rise in global sea levels has hit home at NASA.
NASA’s space shuttle launch pads and astronaut training facilities are in danger of being flooded by rising sea levels caused by climate change, the agency warns.
"Every NASA center has its own set of vulnerabilities, and some are more at risk than others," NASA climatologist Cynthia Rosenzweig said in a post on one of the agency's websites. "But sea level rise is a very real challenge for all of the centers along the coast."
According to NASA, more than half of its infrastructure stands within 16 feet of sea level. That includes at least $32 billion in laboratories, launch pads, airfields, testing facilities, data centers, and other infrastructure – plus 60,000 employees – from the East to the West coast of the United States.  
Last month, NASA scientists issued a statement saying rising sea levels are unavoidable and more dangerous than thought.
The rise is due to two factors, say scientists. For one, when water heats up, it expands. So when the ocean warms, sea level rises. Secondly, ice melts when exposed to heat, and when ice on land melts and runs into the ocean, sea level rises.
Among the bases threatened by the surging water levels is Kennedy Space Center in Florida's Cape Canaveral, the launch point for the 1969 Moon landing and the only place in the nation where it can launch astronauts into space.
"Kennedy Space Center may have decades before waves are lapping at the launch pads," coastal geologist John Jaeger of the University of Florida said in NASA's post. "Still, when you put expensive, immovable infrastructure right along the coast, something's eventually got to give."
Kennedy is built on coastal marshland about 5 to 10 feet above sea level. The nearby beach is eroding. Last year, a protective dune not too far from the launch pads collapsed prompting NASA to address the sustainability of their coastal facilities.
In response, NASA is taking steps to protect its launch infrastructure by getting experts such as Rosenzweig on board to develop long-term plans to mitigate the consequences of the rising sea levels.
"What makes sense for us to do now? And what might we have to do later?" Rosenzweig asked. "We have to consider and understand the risks and then build something that can be adjusted."
NASA explains the flexible adaptation pathways it intends to adopt, 
“People with skills in civil chemical engineering urban planning, real estate, facilities construction and maintenance – must now weigh their options and develop long-range plans. In some places, they will need to design smarter buildings; in others, they will retrofit and harden old infrastructure. If a facility must stay within sight of the water, then maybe the important laboratories, storage, or assembly rooms should not be on the ground floor. For the launch facilities, which must remain along the shore, beach replenishment, sea wall repair, and dune building may become part of routine maintenance.”
If the sea level rise worsens, NASA says it may have to consider moving its infrastructure farther inland. 

150905-a
Florida's natural springs are changing — and disappearing
PRI.org - Elizabeth Shockman
September 05, 2015
Late summer is a perfect time to go for an outdoor swim. Many in Florida, however, are finding that the crystal clear spring-fed swimming holes they used to frequent have turned dark with pollution and algae. 
“We have about 1,000 natural springs in Florida, artesian springs, and they are across-the-board suffering from reduced water volume flow rates and they are across-the-board polluted with nitrate nitrogen,” says Bob Knight, the director of the Howard T. Odum Florida Springs Institute, in Gainesville, Florida.
Reporter Doug Struck grew up near Wakulla Springs, Florida.
“[It was] a place with water so vodka-clear it drew filmmakers, tourists and locals. We used to say you could flip a dime overboard and watch it hit the bottom 120 feet down. Schools of catfish glided in ethereal space as tourists oohed-and-ahhed in glass-bottomed boats above,” Struck says. 
Marjory Stoneman Douglas, the famed biographer of Florida’s wetlands, called the springs “pools of light.” 
Now, however, the lights are dimming. Wakulla Springs and many other are filled with algae. 
“You just find strings of algae kind of hooked to the dirt, hooked to the rocks that are on the bottom and just sort of hanging and flowing in the current,” says Dan Pennington, an environmental planner in Tallahassee. 
According to Pennington, the algae has been moving into the spring since 1980. Now it’s begun to cover everything. 
Scientists blame the algae creep on human influence. 
“Springs die of two human acts. One is over-pumping the aquifer that feeds the spring. And the other is putting nitrates into the aquifer and the source of nitrates are we human beings in the form of fertilizers, whether it's on golf courses, or lawns or crops. And also human waste as well as livestock waste,” says Jim Stevenson, chief naturalist at the Florida Department of Environmental Protection. 
The polluted water has ruined what Struck and many of the other 200,000 tourists who visit Wakulla Springs every year remember as a magical swimming hole. 
Struck reports the water visibility is so reduced that Wakulla now only retains one glass-bottom boat that’s so infrequently used it currently hosts a moorhen nest. 
“The algae is a black fuzz that coats the bottom and sucks up all the light. The luxurious waving eel grass is pretty patchy, the schools of fish are mostly missing. The Wakulla Springs of my childhood swimming hole, the Wakulla Springs of jeweled luminescence, now exists only in memories,” Struck says. 
The city of Tallahassee has spent more than a quarter billion dollars on an advance wastewater treatment plan to reduce nitrates in Wakulla Springs. That’s helped, but Struck reports that there are still thousands of homes with septic fields in the watershed of the springs. 
“The nutrients from these septic fields drain quickly through the sandy soil, into the aquifers, and out into the springs, where they feed the algae,” Struck says. 

150905-b
Will the Feds just let the Everglades die ?
Sunshine State News - by Nancy Smith
September 5, 2015
Federal bureaucracy trumps science, it trumps common sense, it trumps public sentiment. Federal bureaucracy is the monster killing the Florida Everglades. I've been saying that for years. On Thursday in Fort Lauderdale at a Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation (FWC) meeting, the woeful state of the world's largest wetlands at the hands of the feds was made about as public and as plain as it's going to get.
With prolonged higher rainfall, as South Florida is receiving right now, comes too much freshwater in the Everglades. North of  the Tamiami Trail, animals fight for their life in deep water. But thanks to federal regulations, water isn't allowed to flow south into Everglades National Park, where it could save a freshwater-dependent ecosystem dying of thirst.
The feds say no in all kinds of ways. 
One part too wet, the other part too dry, federal bureacracy too arrogant. 
That's what the conversation was all about at the FWC meeting. The commission's South Regional Director Ernie Marks, who has worked closely on Everglades issues with FWC Commissioner "Alligator" Ron Bergeron, presented a disturbing look at Everglades water levels and the many components of restoration in the big swamp.
When high water persists, as it did in 2013, it kills fur-bearing animals in the Everglades and impacts wading birds and tree islands for the worse. Marks reminded participants of another time of sky-high water levels  -- 1994-95, when deep water caused the death of 159 white-tailed deer.
Bergeron said a short period of high water in the Everglades isn't going to do a lot of damage. But federal agencies should  damn the regulations and let water flow south into the park when water levels don't drop on their own.
"An analysis of water levels in the 'Glades since 1943 shows that having no more than 2 feet of water is ideal." But, he said, when water gets to 3 feet, wading birds have no place to stand.
Panthers used to prowl the water conservation areas, he said. But after the high water of 1994-95 decimated their food sources, they moved to the Big Cypress National Preserve.
"For us to manage the wildlife, you have to have healthy habitat," Bergeron said. "We have to decide if we're going to have Everglades restoration or an Everglades reservoir."
Federal bureacracy at work: Federal agencies involved with Everglades restoration, including the Department of Justice, the Department of the Interior and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, don't care if the water conservation areas drown and the park becomes parched because, they say, phosphorus levels are not yet low enough in the water that would be sent into the park.
The levels get lower every year. But they're not low enough for the feds.
Like Bergeron and other commissioners, Capt. Rick Murphy of the "Chevy Florida Insider Fishing Report" suggested that sending the water south with a little more phosphorus than desired would do much less damage than depriving Everglades National Park and its wildlife and too-saline Florida Bay and its fish of fresh water.
Federal bureaucrats are hastening the demise of the Florida Everglades.
I trust Ron Bergeron. He lives the tragedy most Floridians never see. If he tells us that at critical rainy periods, state agencies ought to be able to save animal lives, feed the national park and help Florida Bay -- believe him. 

150904-a
Conservation is the best option for water crisis
Times-Union - Editorial
September 4, 2015
Water withdrawals from the St. Johns River to support growth in Central Florida must be opposed, especially because there are other options available.
Florida’s booming population is already causing enough stress on the river.
But advocates do not have the same political clout as some of the development interests.
Thankfully, one benefit of being slow to conserve is that there is much progress still available.
As a news story by the Times-Union’s David Bauerlein noted, Central Florida has proposed a draft plan that would pull up to 50 million gallons per day from the St. Johns River at one location and up to 110 million gallons per day at two other river locations.
Mayor Lenny Curry has opposed those plans, reasonably stating that river withdrawals should be a “last resort.”
Though Central Florida proposes more conservation, Curry states that more should be done.
As his letter stated, the Floridan aquifer is “close to exhaustion” in Central Florida.
Lisa Rinaman, St. Johns Riverkeeper, told Bauerlein that the river withdrawals are “unsustainable.”
In fairness, Central Florida has done a commendable job of recycling water. Central Florida did not consolidate its sewage treatment plants like Jacksonville so that treatment plants are closer to the areas that would use the recycled water.
In contrast, Jacksonville treats most of its wastewater at the Buckman Street sewage treatment plan in the Talleyrand area. Pumping treated wastewater to the suburbs would be phenomenally expensive.
Still, local leaders cannot realistically ask Central Florida to conserve when Jacksonville has so much left to do.
JEA has raised water rates at higher usage levels in order to deter people from using drinking water for irrigation.
That has worked to a large extent.
But more incentives to replace toilets, faucets and shower heads with conservation-related ones would be consistent with JEA’s mission as a public utility.
There should be more incentives to use native Florida plants and shrubs that are more drought resistant.
And homeowners need to use more drought-tolerant grasses that require less water. Yes, the grass may turn brown for a few months. But that is a small price to pay in order to conserve water.
More agricultural users should be taking advantage of drip irrigation that uses much less water more effectively. Rain barrels and cisterns should make a comeback.
Business and civic leader Preston Haskell made a good point in a Times-Union opinion column that water should no longer be considered a free resource. Like any other scarce resource, there should be a cost to using water.
Meanwhile, pursuing an option like desalination is extremely expensive. Not to mention the fact that desalination produces a brine that can create yet another environmental headache.
To find good examples of water conservation, just look at California — a state located in a desert climate with about twice the population of Florida.
As The New York Times documented, Los Angeles has reduced its water usage to less than it used in 1970 (when it had 1.1 million fewer people than today).
And in May, residential water use in California had dropped by 29 percent, reported the Los Angeles Times.
In fact, Los Angeles is giving back to Mother Nature by constructing wetlands in the city, harvesting stormwater and directing it to aquifers for replenishment and flood control.
In an opinion column on the facing page, two leaders from the Florida Springs Institute propose that JEA build wetlands near Baldwin and pump treated wastewater there to recharge the Floridan aquifer.
That would be highly expensive. But it’s worth exploring.
In fact, JEA previously has studied the cost of injecting treated wastewater to the aquifer.
The challenge of the last century was an energy crisis.
The challenge for this century will be a water crisis.
But conservation still remains the least expensive alternative when done right.
And it’s a far, far better option than taking more water from the St. Johns River.

150904-b
South Florida water district chief of staff resigns
Miami Herald – by Jenny Staletovich
September 4, 2015
A budget dust-up at the South Florida Water Management District over the summermay have taken its first victim: chief of staff Dan DeLisi.
On Thursday, DeLisi submitted his resignation, effective Friday, giving no reason for his departure. When contacted, he referred calls to district spokesman Randy Smith. Smith said DeLisi wanted to return to private practice.
 “He felt the timing was right and he was excited about his decision, so he made up his mind and that’s what he’s going to do,” Smith said.
But Audubon Florida Executive Director Eric Draper worries DeLisi was forced to leave after the district governing board voted in July not to cut taxes, then hastily called a meeting to reverse itself.
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology-trained planner was appointed to the board by Gov. Rick Scott in 2011 before applying for the chief of staff job two years later.
“Dan DeLisi was a good public servant, both when he was on the governing board and as the chief of staff. He was an honest broker who worked hard to do what was in the best interest of the agency,” said Draper, who said he has known the Fort Myers planner for years. “Dan was one of the better ones. He really was.”
In July, after heavy lobbying by environmental groups, the governing board rejected a staff recommendation to roll back the tax rate and voted for the first time in five years not to cut taxes. The decision added about $21 million to the $754 million budget and prevented the district fromhaving to dip into reserves.
But two weeks later, the board held another meeting to undo the vote, saying the state needed to foot more of the bill for Everglades restoration work overseen by the district, which covers 16 counties from Orlando south to Key West.  After the vote, a spokeswoman for Scott said in an email to the Herald that the board “did the right thing.”
Homestead farmer Sam Accursio, who was appointed to the board in July and approved the cut as his first act, said Friday that he was still trying to get information about the resignation.
The board is scheduled to meet Thursday.

150904-c
Will future generations preserve the National Parks ?
Yahoo! News  - Op-Ed by Michael Sainato and Chelsea Skojec
September 4, 2015
Throughout human history, most societies have believed that people and their environment should coexist and that decisions should be in tune with nature. Today, however, industrialized societies' belief systems assert humanity's dominion over nature — an attitude manifested in extensive land development and increasing urbanization that have led to widespread destruction of the natural environment. 
Humans are biological animals living in a biological world, one we are deeply connected with and dependent on — and one we are destabilizing. Connections with the natural world are weakening as younger generations increasingly depend on urban life and technology. Children ages 2 to 5 spend, on average, 32 hours each week watching TV, and children ages 6 to 11 average 28 hours of TV time each week. Teens spend more than 7 hours a day consuming media in some sort of capacity. The younger generations are losing their connections with nature, with potentially adverse effects on the conservation efforts that have protected parts of the natural world from destruction. And without their participation, the livelihood of the U.S. National Park Service — the largest U.S. conservation system, with more than 84 million acres of protected land — is in jeopardy. 
U.S. conservation is a global concern
According to the United Nations Environment Programme, as of Jan. 31, 2008, the United States had a total of 6,770 terrestrial, nationally designated (federal) protected areas.& These protected areas cover approximately 1 million square miles (2.6 million square kilometers), representing 12 percent of the nation's land area. These lands are vital for protecting America's biodiversity and natural resources. 
Future generations must continue to fight to protect and expand these lands for the sake of our planet. Many ecologists subscribe to the half-Earth concept, believing that in order to protect the environment and our planet sufficiently, we must set aside half of the Earth's land surface for wildlife and natural resources to thrive. [Top 10 Most Visited National Parks]
According to the Wild Foundation, the concept is "both a commonsense vision and a practical approach to developing a reciprocal, balanced relationship between people and nature, based on state-of-the-art scientific analysis and time-tested traditional knowledge and wisdom."
Sustaining Grand Teton National Park
As the U.S. National Park Service (NPS) approaches its centennial next year, it recently launched the Find Your Park campaign to remind young Americans of the natural connection they have always had but now are at risk of losing.
"The National Park System provides over 400 opportunities for people to enter a world of exploration," said Grand Teton National Park Superintendent David Vela. Grand Teton National Park was established following decades of advocacy from environmentalists and philanthropists. "Crucible for Conservation" (Grand Teton, 1982) author Robert Righter called these efforts "perhaps the most notable conservation victory of the twentieth century." 
Today, the park is a significant portion of the Yellowstone to Yukon wildlife corridor, a nearly 2,000-mile (3,200 km) superhighway, in progress, connecting several national parks and other protected lands for wildlife to flourish. 
"We want to expose our nation to their birthright, the national parks, which many people don't even know exist right in their backyard or within a day's drive away," Vela said. With support from the Grand Teton National Park Foundation and Grand Teton Association, the park has been able to raise the bar on offerings to young audiences that simply would not exist without public-private partnerships. Since 2011, Grand Teton National Park has been the home of the National Park Service Academy, producing the next generation of conservation stewards through internship and training programs. The academy specializes in recruiting students from diverse colleges across the country. 
"For many of the students, the academy is often their first experience in a national park," Vela said. "Even if they don't use it as a pathway to employment with the National Park Service, we are sending out the next generation of conservation stewards to neighborhoods and communities across the nation." 
Recently, through a grant from AT&T through the Grand Teton National Park Foundation, park staff enlisted the support of University of Maryland professors to facilitate workshops for elementary school children to design an app to connect the park with other kids all over the country. In this way, kids are designing technology for kids to connect them back with nature and their cultural heritage.
Restoring the global stature of Everglades National Park
Florida is one of the most biodiverse states within the United States, but it has also seen an increase in population from fewer than 5 million people in 1960 to currently more than 20 million, with a steady increase of 1,000 new Florida residents added per day. This significant population increase has led to widespread land development and encroachment into Florida's fragile ecosystems. 
The gem of Florida's natural world, Everglades National Park, has faced threats from humans for more than 100 years, from the 1904 campaign of then-Gov. Napoleon Broward, who promised to drain them, to the mass hunting of birds in the park for the plume trade — a fashion trend that decimated bird populations for their feathers in the early 20th century. [All Yours: 10 Least Visited National Parks ]
The park was largely saved from development due to the efforts of Marjory Stoneman Douglas, whose 1947 book, "The Everglades: River of Grass," (Pineapple Press, 1997) widely changed the misconception that the Everglades was a worthless swamp. 
Everglades National Park is the largest tropical wilderness in the United States and only one of three places in the world that can claim listing as an International Biosphere Reserve, a World Heritage Site and a Wetlands of International Importance. 
Everglades National Park is a protected expanse of subtropical wilderness in Florida. The park is ho …
Today, the park remains under threat from human impacts. However, the largest environmental restoration project the world has ever seen, a nearly $8 billion undertaking, is in progress to ensure South Florida's water sources, its wildlife and its protective buffer are safe from tropical storms, hurricanes and rising sea levels. 
"I want people to feel proud of what they have in their backyard and develop a personal sense of ownership and responsibility over it," said Everglades National Park Superintendent Pedro Ramos. "The national parks are part of the story of who we are as a people and as a country. These are places of international significance, and the world is watching to see how well we respond to our responsibility to care for these special natural and historical wonders."
Keeping the Great Smoky Mountains at peak popularity
At Great Smoky Mountains National Park, one of the most visited parks in the country, with more than 10 million visitors in 2014, as well as one of the largest protected areas in the eastern United States, Superintendent Cassius Cash is taking what he learned when helping double attendance at Boston National Historical Park and Boston African American National Historic site to focus efforts on connecting the Great Smoky Mountains with young and diverse audiences. 
The Great Smoky Mountains region was ravaged by timber harvesting in the early 20th century, but was saved, in large part, to the efforts of journalist Horace Kephart and Japanese immigrant George Masa. The men led a crusade to turn the area into a national park. Philanthropist John D. Rockefeller and President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, inspired by their efforts and those of other ordinary area residents, issued the necessary funds to purchase the lands for the park, officially established June 15, 1934. 
"As the National Park Service heads into its 100th year in 2016, it is vital for the future of the parks to deepen our support by connecting with younger generations and groups that traditionally haven't been coming out to the parks," said Cash, who grew up walking through Memphis housing projects to get to Boy Scout meetings. He has pledged to hike 100 miles next summer for the park's centennial, getting groups of people to join him on the adventure who represent demographics that haven't traditionally frequented the park. Cash aims to serve as a role model and example to younger African Americans. "The legacy and success of our work at the National Park Service is not what we've done today, but about how much further it's going to move forward — and that can't happen without younger generations."
One of the National Parks' leading advocates is the National Park Foundation, the official charity of America's National Parks. Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell serves as chairwoman of the foundation, and National Park Service Director Jonathan Jarvis serves as its secretary. 
"It is so important that people understand how the parks are relevant to their lives. Parks are an expression of who we are as a people and a country," said National Park Foundation President and CEO Will Shafroth. 
Shafroth is the great-grandson of Colorado Gov. John Shafroth, who helped author the U.S. Antiquities Act that has been used by U.S. presidents since Theodore Roosevelt to set aside lands for conservation purposes. 
"They connect us to our history and culture, they share our proudest moments and our struggles, and they provide space for recreation, relaxation and rejuvenation," he added. "In order for our parks to survive and thrive in their second century, people must feel connected to them and support them."
Humans are drastically changing the world. Populations continue to grow, sea levels are rising, the climate is changing and ecosystems across the globe are constantly threatened by human actions. And yet, humanity is not just defined by wealth, technological progress, architectural development and the resources we need to sustain them; rather, humanity is rooted in nature. 
Without protecting and preserving those roots, we lose the context for all that we value. In an age where wilderness is vastly disappearing, it is imperative to the future of our planet that the National Parks are successful in engaging future generations, and in representing the diversity of our country, so the penchant for conservation that has saved our existing National Parks continues to be shared to expand and reaffirm the protection of nature. 

150903-b
Looks like Guillory out, Antonacci in at SFWMD: Water experience be damned
Sunshine State News - by Nancy Smith
September 3, 2015
Though Gov. Rick Scott's office would not confirm it, South Florida Water Management District chief executive Blake Guillory will be out of the job next week, replaced with the governor's former general counsel, Peter Antonacci.
Daniel DeLisi, the district's $135,000-a-year chief of staff, tendered his resignation or was fired this week. DeLisi, remember, a former SFWMD board member, was hired over 53 other candidates in March 2013, five days after he resigned his board seat.
How do I know this? From a whole bunch of unnamed sources, sadly. By Thursday afternoon it had become the worst kept secret in Tallahassee.
Other than Guillory himself, who swore up and down Thursday morning that my phone call was the first he'd heard of his impending dismissal, not a soul would go on the record for this story. Every one of the people I talked to said they feared retribution from the governor's office.
Details nevertheless are consistent to a fault; the story is circulating among the highest level of players in the capital. And as rumors go, consider this the take-it-to-the-bank variety. 
Apparently Guillory, 54, is being axed because he failed to sell the governor's tax-cut message to SFWMD board members in July. Members believed in the need for the district's $754 million budget plan. 
This is the agency, remember, that collects taxes from 16 counties, guards against South Florida flooding and leads Everglades restoration. It is the largest, busiest and most intricately employed of all five water management districts in Florida. Its budget has been under pressure since 2011, when the district cut nearly 400 employees. And what members did in July is decide they couldn't afford to cut property taxes by 8 percent.
Guillory apparently was supposed to script the July meeting and the vote by preparing board members -- all of them, Scott appointees -- to go the governor's tax-cut way. Only, he didn't do that. Or if he did, it didn't work.
After the vote a Scott office spokesman, sounding a little like Tom Hagen in "The Godfather," told the media, "The governor is very disappointed." 
No horse head under the covers for Guillory. But he can expect a pink slip or an invitation to step away of his own volition after a meeting scheduled for Tuesday. 
Now what ?
Well, when something like this happens, you like to hope you're going to get an upgrade. But GrayRobinson's Peter Antonacci -- great lawyer maybe, zero water management creds -- is no upgrade.
Though Antonacci has less water management experience than Guillory had coming in, they do have something in common: Both are accomplished hired guns.
In 2013 Guillory was the executive director of the smaller Southwest Florida Water Management District. His claim to fame there was slashing staff. Even before he started at SFWMD, Guillory had sent two of his deputy executive directors and the agency's longtime attorney packing, and then demoted a third deputy director. He went on to dump another 150 employees. 
When Melissa Meeker abruptly resigned as chief exec of the SFWMD, Guillory let the governor know he was available, and voila.
In case you haven't noticed, under Scott, water management district directors have been chosen not on their ability as water managers, but on their willingness to slash and burn budgets and staffs and then sweep the resultant problems under the rug. This, of course, is besides agreeing to take directon from the governor and the Department of Environmenal Protection rather than their boards. It's the bond that Guillory and Antonacci share.
Antonacci can claim a very accomplished legal career in the state capital. He served a number of governors starting with Bob Graham. In 2012, Scott appointed him general counsel to the governor, making him Scott’s primary adviser on the appointment of trial and appellate court judges as well as judicial nominating commissioners throughout the state. It's a position he held until earlier this year.   
It was Antonacci in the background pulling the strings for the Scott administration, gutting the St. Johns River Water Management District of senior staff, effecting a purge that left the simultaneous and unexplained departures of four executives from the agency that protects Central Florida's wetlands, rivers and aquifer. If you include the executive director, it was five senior St. Johns River WMD people -- all made gone. 
Those are Antonacci's water management credentials.
Without a doubt, the moves weakened the St. Johns region's environmental safeguards, but strengthening them was never his mission.
One more problem with Antonacci: His significant other is Anne Longman, of Lewis, Longman & Walker PA. Longman's firm represents the Seminole Tribe of Florida and does environmental and water law work for SFWMD. It will be interesting to hear how he gets around what looks like conflicts of interest the size of a small canyon.
I did try to get this story -- any part of it -- on the record. Here's how my phone calls went: 1) Guillory denied knowing a thing about his tanking job, even though he's been talking around about Antonacci wanting it for the last two weeks; 2) neither Antonacci nor Longman returned my calls, even after I left a detailed message why I was calling; 3) the governor's office first sent me back to the water management district, which didn't call me back; then Communications Director Jackie Schutz emailed me this statement: "We have no announcements on this board and we will definitely keep you posted when we do."
In fairness to everyone involved, a word of explanation:
Water management districts are not state agencies and until 2010 enjoyed autonomy with their governing boards and the Department of Environmental Protection overseeing them. Then along came the Charlie Crist/U.S. Sugar deal, when the SFWMD board members of the day were throwing around land purchase money, proposing expenditures in never-been-heard-of-before amounts. The Legislature and governor panicked. My point is, the state's overreach we see today is a direct outgrowth of that one broken "deal."
But let me make myself clear.  Florida's water management districts -- particularly SFWMD, biggest and most complex -- need to be run by real water managers, managers who know how to hire and inspire and keep good staff, who won't "economize away" the brightest and best. It grieves me to see how many outstanding, knowledgeable staff have left SFWMD particularly in the last year.  
Meanwhile, those problems getting swept under the rug don't go away. The health and safety of millions of Floridians -- let alone the successful completion of Everglades restoration -- are all at issue.

150902-a
Everglades National Park to restrict motorized boating
Sun Sentinel – by David Fleshler
September 2, 2015
FORT LAUDERDALE — Everglades National Park plans to restrict motorized boating on Florida Bay, designate additional land as wilderness and make the park more accessible to visitors as part of the first overhaul of its management plan in more than 30 years.
The plan, which is final but will be implemented gradually, will prohibit boaters from using their main engines or require them to go at idle speed on about one-third of the bay, in an attempt to prevent their propellers from destroying the seagrass beds that form the base of the bay’s food chain.
Visit our news partner the Sun Sentinel to read the full story.
Related:           New Rules At Everglades National Park Ban Use Of Motors On ... WLRN

150902-b
Feds release Everglades National Park management plan
TradeOnlyToday
September 2, 2015
The National Park Service released the final General Management Plan for Everglades National Park, which includes several changes that will affect recreational boating and fishing access and habitat conservation in the park.
Park officials have been working on the plan update for several years. After concerns were raised about the draft plan and the potential for reduced public access to park waters, park officials worked closely with members of the recreational fishing and boating community to identify ways to better facilitate access while minimizing boating impacts to important habitat, namely seagrass.
As a result, many significant changes were made between the draft plan and the final plan.
A coalition of eight groups representing recreational fishing and boating expressed its appreciation to park officials for addressing concerns that were raised during the process.
One significant change boaters will experience is a mandatory boater education and boating permit system. Operators of motorboats and non-motorized boats, including paddled craft, would complete a mandatory education program to obtain a permit to operate vessels in the park.
“Covering much of the southern tip of mainland Florida and nearly all of Florida Bay, Everglades National Park is home to some of the best recreational fishing opportunities that Florida has to offer,” Trip Aukeman, director of Advocacy for Coastal Conservation Association Florida, said in a statement. “Given that this GMP will guide management actions for the next 20 to 30 years, it’s critically important that we get it right. Overall, we believe the GMP strikes an appropriate balance of management measures to safeguard resources while allowing for reasonable boating and fishing access.”
“The recreational fishing community recognizes pole and troll zones are an important management tool to conserve shallow water habitat, but these zones must be established at a reasonable size and with access corridors to allow anglers to still reach the area,” said Mike Leonard, ocean resource policy director for the American Sportfishing Association.
“In working with the recreational fishing community, Everglades National Park officials modified tens of thousands of acres of the park’s waters to better facilitate boating access and included 29 new access corridors in the final GMP, compared to the draft GMP. The level of responsiveness of Everglades National Park officials to our community’s input is reflective of how good public policy should be developed.”
“We are pleased to see a cooperatively developed plan that protects our natural resources, as well as boater access, in a balanced manner,” said Nicole Vasilaros, vice president of federal and legal affairs for the National Marine Manufacturers Association.
“It’s hard not to recognize the clear contrast between the degree to which stakeholder input was considered for Everglades National Park’s GMP, compared to that of Biscayne National Park, where the recreational fishing community was resoundingly ignored,” Leonard said.
“By recognizing that habitat conservation can be achieved while still allowing the public to get out on the water and enjoy our public places, Everglades National Park officials set a positive example that we hope other National Park Service units will follow.”
Related:
New Rules At Everglades National Park Ban Boats With Motors In Florida Bay    WLRN
On-the-water help from guides helped guide new Everglades National Park management plan -    Florida Keys Keynoter
Final Management Plan Released for Everglades National Park        MuskieFIRST

150902-c
Stanford soil sleuths solve mystery of arsenic-contaminated water
Stanford News - by Ker Than
September 2, 2015
Stanford Earth scientist Scott Fendorf helped discover how trace amounts of arsenic were moving from sediments into groundwater aquifers in Southern California.
Video by Ker Than
Stanford Earth scientist Scott Fendorf discusses his work with the Orange County Water District to investigate how arsenic was getting into the water supply.
Can water ever be too clean? If the intent is to store it underground, the answer, surprisingly, is yes. In a new study, Stanford scientists have shown that recycled water percolating into underground storage aquifers in Southern California picked up trace amounts of arsenic because the water was too pure.
The research, published online in the journal Environmental Science & Technology, sheds light on a poorly understood aspect of groundwater recharge with purified recycled water, namely the potential mobilization of arsenic. Arsenic is a naturally occurring element that can cause organ failure and cancer in humans with prolonged exposure above established health thresholds.
The finding has implications beyond California, as more communities are increasingly tapping into and actively managing their groundwater resources to combat drought and dwindling water supplies. "Globally, as we're pushing our water resources, the use of groundwater, the replenishment of groundwater and subsurface water storage are all on the rise," said study co-author Scott Fendorf, the Huffington Family Professor in Earth Sciences and a senior fellow by courtesy at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment.
The problem first came to light when the Orange County Water District (OCWD) in Fountain Valley, Calif., noticed that recycled wastewater that had undergone a rigorous purification process showed temporary, low-level increases in arsenic after it percolated into soils and sediments from recharge basins (essentially large, man-made surface ponds) into underground storage aquifers.
Advanced water purification
Orange County differs from most communities in that it purifies treated wastewater instead of discharging it directly into rivers and oceans. The water purification process at OCWD, known as the Groundwater Replenishment System, is one of the most advanced in the world and involves three major steps: microfiltration, reverse osmosis and a final cleansing with ultraviolet light and hydrogen peroxide.
"Reverse osmosis is really the heart of our process, and it involves forcing water through a semipermeable membrane that is essentially designed as a molecular sieve, allowing water molecules to pass through but rejecting other dissolved molecules and ions," said study co-author Jason Dadakis, OCWD's director of health and regulatory affairs.
The purified water is then piped 13 miles from the treatment plant to recharge stations, where it seeps into underground aquifers and is stored for at least six months before it is released for use by the county's 2.4 million residents. The OWCD carefully tracks the water through each step of the purification and storage process.
Beginning in 2009, results from groundwater monitoring wells near the recharge basins first detected increased arsenic levels, and in some cases the levels were just above the acceptable U.S. drinking water standard of 10 micrograms per liter. The arsenic spikes were transient, and returned to acceptable background levels by the time the water was extracted for use farther away.
"At no point was the groundwater delivered for public consumption in the area unsafe, but the OCWD was considering expanding its recharge of purified recycled water, so we thought it was prudent to get a better understanding of what was going on," Dadakis said.
An OCWD investigation revealed that when the recycled water first arrived at the recharge basins, it was free of arsenic, so the contamination must have happened as the water seeped underground. However, none of the normal trigger mechanisms for arsenic contamination seemed to apply. For example, in Southeast Asia, arsenic contamination is largely due to bacteria removing oxygen from the soil and creating anaerobic conditions that cause arsenic atoms to migrate from sediments into the water. But the OCWD aerated their water, so low oxygen levels were not to blame.
Triggering an arsenic spike
OCWD investigators also noticed another curious thing: Only the purified recycled water triggered the arsenic spike. Local runoff and imported water from the Colorado River did not pick up arsenic as it percolated into the recharge stations. Puzzled, Dadakis enlisted the help of Fendorf, a soil scientist at Stanford's School of Earth, Energy & Environmental Sciences.
Fendorf's team analyzed sediment samples from the recharge stations and discovered that arsenic was present in very low concentrations in a thin band of clay above the aquifers. That explained where the arsenic was coming from, but not how the arsenic was getting into the water.
Further experiments eventually revealed the culprit: The water was too pure. In particular, the distilled water from the treatment plant was lacking in calcium and magnesium; this deficiency caused calcium and magnesium atoms in the sediments to migrate into the water and off of charged clay particles that harbored the arsenic. With the calcium and magnesium ions leaving the clay surface, the arsenic ions were repelled from the clay surface and entered the water. The other water sources used to replenish the groundwater basin didn't draw in arsenic because they already contained abundant calcium and magnesium ions.
"This is a new trigger for arsenic contamination that wasn't appreciated before," Fendorf said.
Now that the cause of the arsenic spike is known, OCWD is experimenting with ways to fix the problem. One possible solution is to add more calcium to the water during the treatment process.
"We've altered some of our post-treatment operations here," Dadakis said. "We keep a closer eye on the calcium level and have actually boosted it recently, in part due to the recommendations coming out of Scott's work."
Fendorf noted that as more communities consider manipulating groundwater resources and increasing subsurface water storage, the risk of large-scale contamination increases. "It only takes a little bit of arsenic or other elements to contaminate a big aquifer," Fendorf said. "In Orange County, the contaminant was arsenic, but in other areas, it might be uranium, chromium, selenium or boron, as examples."

150901-a
Cut out sugar quota system
Herald-Tribune - Editorial
September 1, 2015
After decades of boosting food prices for American consumers, undermining foreign aid programs and polluting the Everglades, the sugar industry appears to be gumming up a brand-new project.
The U.S. government's sugar-support program — which has made the price of domestic sugar almost double that of the world price — is said to be a sticking point in negotiations over the Trans-Pacific Partnership.
The proposed trade deal, potentially affecting 40 percent of the global economy, is stalled in part by “the calls of Australia and other nations for the U.S. to loosen a quota system that protects domestic suppliers while making the product more expensive for consumers,” said a Bloomberg News article in Monday's Herald-Tribune.
It's just one more reason to end the support system that began during the Great Depression and is kept alive by the sugar lobby's constant contributions to powerful politicians.
The federal program limits domestic production of cane and beet sugar, restricts foreign imports, places a floor under growers' prices and requires the government to buy crop surpluses — those that the industry can't sell for a profit — which the government then sells at a loss to the ethanol industry.
The program protects the incomes of sugar producers at the expense of consumers and the environment.
The higher domestic price raises the cost of any food containing sugar — from bread to cereal to ketchup — at an overall cost to consumers of an estimated $3.7 billion a year. It also costs thousands of jobs as food manufacturers move jobs to countries where they can pay the lower world price for sugar.
And the price difference is significant. A global production surplus of sugar has driven the world price to its lowest level since 2008, the Bloomberg article noted. A pound of domestic sugar cost 24.45 cents Friday in the commodities futures market, versus the global price of 10.94 cents.
The price supports, meanwhile, spell environmental disaster for Florida. The higher price encourages overproduction of South Florida sugar fields, and pesticide-and-fertilizer runoff contributes greatly to the pollution of the Everglades. The pollution and other impacts from sugar cane farming, in large part, necessitated a multibillion-dollar state and federal restoration program.
The support program also undermines U.S. foreign policy by undercutting the price of sugar grown in poorer neighbors such as Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, which increases their need for U.S. aid.
Obviously, the federal government has many reasons to end, or at least seriously reform, the sugar-support program. But the reasons to maintain the status quo are the sugar industry's contributions to politicians' campaigns.
Sugar represents less than 2 percent of the value of all U.S. crop production, but the industry contributes more to congressional campaigns than other crop producer. From 2007 to 2014, sugar producers donated $18.5 million, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.
That level of largess persuades key members of Congress in both parties to ignore calls from reform not only from food manufacturers and environmentalists but from conservatives like columnist George Will and activist Grover Norquist.
Now trading partners involved in the Trans-Pacific Partnership talks have joined those calls. The TPP will affect dozens of countries and, proponents say, make it easier for U.S. companies to sell goods around the world. The deal is a top goal of the Obama administration and is backed by Republican leaders in Congress.
Will this tip the scales toward global trade and American consumers and away from the sugar producers? Don't count on it. In Washington, money talks — and, for Congress, the conversation with the sugar industry is sweet.

150901-b
Florida senator comes to UF, discusses rising sea levels
Alligator – by Caitlin Ostroff, Staff Writer
September 1, 2015
Florida Sen. Bill Nelson visited UF to discuss the threat of rising sea levels.
On Monday, Nelson met with UF assistant geology professor Andrea Dutton in Pugh Hall to discuss her research on the history of rising sea levels and what it can tell scientists about the future.
"The highest place in Florida is 350 feet above sea level," said Nelson, who advocates for action against sea-level rise. "I’ve been preaching to a choir that doesn’t listen."
About one-third of sea-level rise can be attributed in part to thermal expansion, which is when water in the ocean expands as it heats up, Dutton said to an intimate audience of about seven.
Melting ice sheets are also to blame, she said.
"In the next century, we expect massive loss from polar ice sheets," Dutton said.
Although people might be able to alleviate the problem temporarily, she said even if we stopped emitting carbon dioxide today, sea levels won’t stop rising.
"Sea level’s not going to stop in 2100," she said. "It’s going to keep going."
Nelson shared this concern and said sea-level rise would directly affect Florida. Seventy-five percent of Florida’s population lives along the coast, he said.
"The evidence is there," Nelson said. "We have sea-level rise in South Florida that is five to eight inches."
It will take a major catastrophe for people to care that rising sea levels are a threat, he said.
Although Tropical Storm Erika has weakened, the rain will affect sea levels in Florida, Nelson said.
He said all of the rain from Erika will flow down the Kissimmee River to Lake Okeechobee in two months. This will force the water level of the lake to decrease, and all of the nutrient-laden water will cause algae blooms.
Nelson said insurance companies are raising rates for people who live in flood-prone areas around Florida. These areas comprise 40 percent of all areas with federal flood insurance, he said.
Dutton said sea-level rise would affect the entire state.
"Looking at the impact on a broader perspective, that will have a huge effect on Gainesville," she said.
The projections for Jacksonville and the west coast of Florida are also bad, Dutton said. These areas get less attention because there are fewer people living there than in South Florida.
"Not only is it going to happen, it already has," she said. "It’s not a question of ‘if’ but ‘when.’"
Helen Warren, a Gainesville city commissioner, said she felt it was important for her to come out and hear Nelson speak about sea-level rise.
"It’s real," Warren said. "It’s happening."

150901-c
Managing Florida's Aquifers
Press Release
September 1, 2015
CONFERENCE TIMING:  Monday, Sep 21, 2015 until Tuesday, Sep 22, 2015 8:20 AM to 3:45 PM
A unique annual opportunity for information exchange among planners, water managers, engineers, geologists, hydrogeologists, utility operators, water re-use and aquifer recharge consultants, water treatment specialists, water well contractors, city and county government, regulatory authorities, environmental NGOs, water attorneys and interested citizens.
The Conference is an essential one-stop-shop for all professionals, end-users, and citizens who have an interest in the management of Florida's aquifers. Program presenters will provide updates on projects and technology innovations - and the regulatory framework that allows for the development and conservation of the state's groundwater. During the 2 days of the conference there will be opportunity to discuss and assess progress and roadblocks for effective integrated management of Florida's water resources.
This is AGWT's 15th Annual Florida Aquifer Recharge Program. This is a two day event in Orlando - offering continuing education credits to Water Well Contractors, Professional Engineers and Water/Waste Water Operators. Registration includes light breakfast and lunch on both days. Day one also offers a reception (cash bar) starting at 5:15PM.
Admission: Varies - Please check our website: www.agwt.org/events - Event Link
Location:  Managing Florida's Aquifers Conference - 50 Pleasant Street, Concord, NH 32822

150901-d
Record of Decision signed for Central Everglades Planning Project
USACE Jacksonville – by Jenn Miller
September 1, 2015
The Corps’ planning process requires robust public participation to ensure stakeholder involvement, understanding, and support. For the Central Everglades Planning Project alone, 74 public engagements were conducted within 29 months
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Assistant Secretary of the Army for Civil Works Jo-Ellen Darcy signed the Record of Decision for the Central Everglades Planning Project on Aug. 31, 2015, signifying the completion of the final administrative review for the ecosystem restoration project’s report.
The Central Everglades Planning Project, also known as CEPP, is the culmination of a three-year planning effort involving the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Jacksonville District, the South Florida Water Management District and other representatives from all levels of government, stakeholder groups, and the public at large. The schedule for this study was driven by the Administration’s commitment to Everglades restoration as signified by the President’s inclusion of CEPP within his “We Can’t Wait” initiative.
"Achieving this milestone validates the work of the Jacksonville District team," said Col. Jason Kirk, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Jacksonville District commander. "Today we celebrate this important approval that aids our moving forward in the comprehensive effort to restore the central part of America's Everglades."
CEPP combines several components of the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan (CERP), and is designed to capture water that is currently being discharged to tide and direct additional flows to the Everglades and Florida Bay. The project optimizes the use of public lands to move additional water to the south.
“The latest progress on CEPP reflects the continuing commitment between the Corps, the District and all the stakeholders who share the goal of restoring the Everglades,” said Daniel O’Keefe, Chairman of the South Florida Water Management District (SFWMD) Governing Board. “CEPP will play an important role in allowing more water flow to the central Everglades, Everglades National Park and Florida Bay while benefiting the coastal estuaries.”
The Corps submitted the final report for administrative review to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and the Assistant Secretary of the Army for Civil Works in December 2014. With administrative review now complete, the report will be transmitted to Congress for authorization and subsequent appropriations.
"The signed Record of Decision signifies the completion of the final checkpoint in the report's review process,” said Howard Gonzales, Jr., Chief of the Jacksonville District’s Ecosystem Branch. “With this signed document, we are one step closer to making these plans a reality."
The Corps prepared the CEPP planning document using a pilot process designed to reduce the overall time allocated for a study of this magnitude. In prior years, plan formulation and review may have taken six years or longer. The CEPP process was completed in half that time.
"Momentum remains strong in our Everglades restoration efforts,” said Gonzales. “The Central Everglades Planning Project is a vital component in our restoration efforts and I am extremely proud of the collaborative effort that was undertaken to get us to where we are today."
The Corps’ planning process requires robust public participation to ensure stakeholder involvement, understanding, and support. For the Central Everglades Planning Project alone, 74 public engagements were conducted within 29 months.
"The dedicated and collaborative efforts undertaken by the Corps, partnering federal and state agencies and stakeholders was pivotal in the completion of the Central Everglades Planning Project,” said Kim Taplin, Central Everglades Branch Chief for the Jacksonville District. “This is not just a success for the district, but for everyone who participated in the process."
CEPP was implemented successfully as part of the Corps modernized planning process. Given the size and complexity of this project, the implementation period will occur over multiple years and the project is expected to be implemented in phases. The implementation period could range from six to 26 years depending on funding.
Additional information on the Central Everglades Planning Project available at: http://bit.ly/CEPP_USACE

1509dd-z       

1509dd Title - Source - Author - Date - Text                                                 SEPTEMBER 2015                             

yymmdd-y

1509dd-z

1509dd Title - Source - Author - Date - Text